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OLD GREEK 

A MEMOIR OF 

EDWARD NORTH 



J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



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OLD GREEK 

AN OLD-TIME PROFESSOR IN AN 
OLD-FASHIONED COLLEGE 

A MEMOIR OF 

EDWARD NORTH 

WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS LECTURES 



BY 



S. N. D. NORTH, LL.D. 



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Copyright, 1905, 
By S. N. D. north. 



THIS VOLUME 

IS DEDICATED TO THE ALUMNI OF HAMILTON COLLEGE 

WHOM "OLD GREEK" LOVED SO WELL 



INTRODUCTION 

Many reasons have seemed to justify and indeed to 
compel the publication of this volume. The life of 
Doctor Edward North reveals a relationship between 
the American college professor and his students, which 
was frequent in the early days in the small college and 
which has largely disappeared from our big modern 
universities, where professors and tutors are numbered 
by the hundred and students by the thousand. This 
picture of "Old Greek," the name by which he was 
familiarly and lovingly known, will stand for many 
another college professor, dear to his students, who 
spent his life making and molding men. His career 
is a typical, although not a unique, instance of the ad- 
vantages which spring from this personal and intimate 
contact of professor and student and the influence of 
this association upon the character and career of the 
graduate body. This volume may afford a tangible 
basis from which to measure a certain distinct loss 
which has followed the disappearance of that relation- 
ship from the modern college environment. As an 
argument in favor of the small college, as contrasted 
with the big university, the life of Doctor Edward 
North is perhaps more suggestive than any yet writ- 
ten. His services as professor of Greek in Hamilton 
College covered fifty-eight years — as long a period as 
any similar service in the same chair in any American 
college or university. In these fifty-eight years Doctor 
North came in personal contact with several thousand 



viii INTRODUCTION 

students — many of them the sons and grandsons of 
earlier graduates ; and the evidence is abundant that 
all of them drew some inspiration from his contagious 
spirit and example. 

This volume carries a message of momentous import 
to the American teacher. It indicates the sources of a 
teacher's personal power over his pupils, and how he 
may better train the intellect by establishing a bond of 
sympathy. It is the story of a life that glorified the 
teacher's profession, lifting the calling out of bondage 
and drudgery and clothing it in a new garb. The joy, 
the power, the nobility of the profession of the teacher, 
have never been more effectively exemplified than in 
Doctor North's career, or more inspiringly presented 
than in his written words. He was not only a great 
teacher, he taught others how to teach. 

Incidentally, this volume is an appeal for the resto- 
ration of the classics to that place in our educational 
system from which modern methods are so rapidly 
excluding them. Doctor North resisted earnestly the 
elbowing of Greek and Latin from the college curricu- 
lum, pointing out that a knowledge of the classical lan- 
guages and literature is essential to complete culture 
and as the basis of exact knowledge. No student of 
the classics has done more than Edward North to 
reveal the hidden beauties and the obscure significance 
of the Greek tragedies, or has penetrated more deeply 
into the Greek character, or more accurately delineated 
the power and the splendor of the Greek language. 

This memoir is the response to what has seemed an 
imperative demand of the alumni of Hamilton College 
and the friends of Doctor North. His life was so simple 
and so serene, so cloistered, so completely consecrated 
to a single object, that its mere biographical details 
are few and commonplace. The attempt has therefore 



INTRODUCTION ix 

been made to present a picture — all too meager and 
colorless — of Doctor North's inner life: his rare and 
beautiful nature ; his devotion to others ; his tastes 
and traits and habits of mind ; and especially the men- 
tal activities which made him so profoundly singular 
and so universally beloved. In this attempt the chief 
reliance has been upon his written words — the price- 
less legacy left by his tireless pen. 

It is possible to reproduce in some small measure the 
intellectual half of Doctor North through his scholarly 
and many-sided work. In the broadest and best sense 
of the word, therefore, this memorial is autobiographical 
in character. Beyond the few dry dates and connect- 
ing links supplied by the compiler, the volume is essen- 
tially the Ufe of Edward North as written by himself 
— in journal, poem, lecture, and reminiscence. The 
difficulty has been to make the selection from the mate- 
rial at hand. The homestead at "Halfwayup" was 
left literally running over with memorabilia of every 
description. Doctor North had a characteristic dislike 
for the destruction of any written or printed word. 
He seemed to feel that every letter he received had 
value, as throwing some light upon character or events, 
and each was labeled and filed with assiduous care. 
His books are filled with newspaper clippings, relating 
in some way to their contents. His scrapbooks are 
voluminous and well arranged. His own writings were 
found piled in drawers, on shelves, in out-of-the-way 
places — the accumulation of sixty years, during which 
his pen seemed never to sleep. They comprise lectures 
for his classes and for popular audiences; addresses; 
brief speeches with illuminating flashes of wit here and 
there ; poems and verses, many of them never intended 
for the public ; editorials and newspaper articles ; memo- 
randa of his thoughts and plans; diaries which record 



X INTRODUCTION 

the daily routine of his life and reveal the trend of his 
thought at particular periods. Indeed, it would be 
easier to fill ten volumes with this material than one, 
thus avoiding the difficult task of selection. Every- 
thing he wrote, outside the routine work of the chro- 
nologist, seems worthy of preservation by reason of 
some beautiful thought, valuable lesson, quaint humor, 
or novel idea. 

Out of this wealth of material the aim has been to 
select sufficient to reveal the versatility of Doctor 
North's mind, both in prose and poetry; and for the 
rest, to preserve only the most important of his contri- 
butions to the interpretation and understanding of the 
Greek language and literature. In this way the com- 
piler hopes, while presenting this inadequate memorial 
of the beloved father and venerated instructor, to make 
a valuable addition to literature — a book which will 
not only satisfy the wants of his friends, but appeal 
to readers who never knew **01d Greek," but love the 
things he loved and can find profit and pleasure in 
sharing his thoughts. 

The compiler of this memoir gratefully acknowledges 
his indebtedness to his sister, Mrs. Laura D. N. Reed, 
for her assistance in examining the papers of Doctor 
North and in many other helpful ways; to Professor 
Edward Fitch, the successor of Doctor North in the 
Greek chair at Hamilton College, for the chapter con- 
tributed to the memoir and for his scholarly aid in 
revising copy and reading proofs ; and to a number of 
others, graduates and friends, whose advice has been 
freely sought and given. 

S. N. D. NORTH. 

Washington, D.C, 
May, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 

PAGE 

Ancestry — John North — The East Berlin School — Worthington 
Academy — Remembered Teachers — Poem at the Centennial of the 
Berlin Church — The Trees of Boyhood — Connecticut ... I 

CHAPTER II 

STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 

A Reminiscence of Professor Oren Root — The College Colloquies 

— The Valedictory Address — A College Poem — A Tribute to the 
Early College Professors — College Honors — The Classic Authors — 
College Life in the Old Days — Some College Rhymes ... 20 

CHAPTER III 

PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 

A Brief Experience as a Lawyer — Appointed Professor of Ancient 
Languages — Tribute to his Predecessors — Reminiscences of Presi- 
dent Henry Davis — First Experiences in the Professor's Chair — 
Marriage — A Lyceum Lecturer — Degree of L.H.D. — Alumni 
Trustee — Acting President — Call to Albany Normal School — 
Fiftieth Anniversary of his Professorship — The Sobriquet of " Old 
Greek " — Contemporary Greek Professors — Resignation — Tribute 
of the Faculty and Trustees — Death — His Epitaph, written by 
Himself 43 

CHAPTER IV 

SOJOURN IN GREECE 

Secretary to Minister Francis in Athens — Acting Consul at Piraeus 

— A Lay Sermon — Personal Experiences in Athens — The Modern 
Greek — Impressions of the Greek People — King George and his 
New Year's Ball — The Wingless Victory r 80 



xii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER V 

SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE AND RELATIONS WITH 
THE STUDENTS 

PAGE 

The Early Sectarian College and its Struggles — Doctor Simeon 
North, Fifth President — Edward North's Peculiar Relations to the 
Institution — Professor Hopkins's Eulogy — An Employment Agency 
for Teachers — Robert College — Alumniana — Half-century Annal- 
ists' Letters — Necrologist — Addresses at Alumni Reunions — Tribute 
to Alma Mater — The Christmas Greeting of 1901 .... 102 

CHAPTER VI 

REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 

The Kirkland Cottage — A Tribute to Samuel Kirkland — Sken- 
andoa — Samson Occum — Traditions of President Azel Backus — 
A Bacchanal Ballad — President Backus's Spectacles — The Old 
Homes on College Hill . . . 143 

CHAPTER VII 

THE TEACHER 

A Teacher of Teachers — The Class Farewells and the Professor's 
Responses — His Methods of Instruction — Cramming — The Class 
Lectures — Conditions of Successful Teaching — The Seven Lamps 
of the Teacher — The Teacher's Sources of Power . • , .167 

CHAPTER VIII 

GREEK SCHOLAR 

The All-round Classical Scholar of the Past— Doctor North's 
Greek Mottoes — German Influence in Modern Classical Study — 
Doctor North's Favorite Classical Authors — Why We Study the 
Classics 208 

CHAPTER IX 

WRITER AND LECTURER 

A Master of the English Language — Poet — Essayist — Lyceum 
Lecturer — List of Doctor North's Lectures — The Building of a 
Tragedy — The Old Greek Lexicon 264 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER X 

LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 

PAGE 

Philologist — The Study of Words — Puns and Punsters — The 
Spelling Reform Movement — The Language of the Future — In- 
debtedness of English to the Greek Language — Silent and Superflu- 
ous Letters — The Argument for Phonetic Spelling — Josh Billings . 308 

CHAPTER XI 

GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 

" Halfwayup " and its Trees — The Pleasures of Vacation — The 
Lombardy Poplars — Some Poems on Trees — A Tribute to An- 
drew J. Downing — Philodendria — A Missionary to Farmers — 
Report on Planting Trees — Lawns — Greek Gardening . . . 330 

CHAPTER XII 
Memorial Address 389 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Edward North ...... Frontispiece ■ 

FACING PAGE 

House in which Edward North was born 4 v 

Portrait of Edward North in the 40's 46 - 

Hamilton Faculty, 1869 62 ^ 

Letter of Resignation (facsimile) 72 - 

Portrait of Edward North in the 50's 88 ^ 

College Range from the North 104 

Portrait of Simeon North, Fifth President of Hamilton College . 106 -^ 

Portrait of Edward North in the 6o's 120 -" 

Campus Scene 146 - 

Sentiment, " The Greek we leave behind us " (facsimile) . . . 1 74 
Portrait of Edward North in the 8o's . . , , . .216 

Letter to Judge Truax (facsimile) 266 

" Halfwayup " 330 

College Street from the Crest of the Hill 342 

Portrait of Edward North in the 90's 390 



XV 



CHAPTER I 

INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 

Ancestry — John North — The East Berlin School — Worth- 
INGTON Academy — Remembered Teachers — Poem at the 
Centennial of the Berlin Church — The Trees of Boyhood 
— Connecticut. 

Edward North was born at Berlin, Hartford county, 
Connecticut, on March 9, 1820, the fourth son of Reuben 
and Hulda (Wilcox) North. He was of the eighth gen- 
eration from John North, who came from England in 
1635, when twenty years old, in the good ship Susan 
and Ellen, which brought thither, in numerous voyages, 
many of the founders of the best-known American 
families.^ His name is found in the original lists of 

1 The genealogy of the North family in the line of Edward North 
is as follows: 

1. John North, Farmington, Conn. (m. Hannah Bird of Farmington). 
Born 1615. Died 1691, set. 76. 

2. Thomas North, Avon, Hartford Co., Conn. (m. Hannah Newell). 
Born 1650. Died 171 2, aet. 62. 

3. Thomas North 2d, Kensington Co., Conn. (m. Martha Roys, of 
Wallingford, 1698). Born 1673. Died 1725, set. 52. 

4. Isaac North, Berlin, Conn. (m. Mary Woodford). Born 1 703. 
Died Berlin, Conn., 1788, set. 85. 

5. Jedediah North, Berlin, Conn. (m. Sarah Wilcox, daughter of Daniel 
Wilcox, 1757). Born Berlin, Conn., 1734. Died Berlin, Conn., Dec. 
16, 1816, set. 82. 

6. Simeon North, Middletown, Conn. (m. Lucy Savage, 1786). Born 
Berlin, Conn., July 13, 1765. Died Middletown, Conn., Aug. 25, 1852, set. 
87. 

7. Reuben North, Berlin, Conn. (m. Linda Wilcox, 181 1; m. Hulda 
Wilcox, 1817). Born Dec. 11, 1786. Died April 4, 1853, set. 67. 

8. Edward North, Clinton, N.Y. (m. Mary Francis Dexter). Born 
Berlin, Conn., March 9, 1820. Died Clinton, N.Y., Sept. 13, 1903, set. 2>-^. 

I 



2 OLD GREEK 

"Persons of quality emigrating from England to the 
Plantations, America, from 1600- 1700," and he is de- 
clared to be "no subsidy man." Among his fellow- 
voyagers on the Susa7i and Ellen were Sir Richard 
Salton stall, Thomas Welles who was afterwards gov- 
ernor of Connecticut, and ninety others. " During the 
past twelve months," says Fiske, "a score of ships 
had brought from England to Massachusetts more than 
three thousand souls, and so great an accession made 
further movement easy. By the next May (1637) eight 
hundred people were living in Windsor, Hartford, and 
Wethersfield." 

John North sailed from Hull; but no success has 
attended repeated efforts to locate his family in the 
mother country. He was the progenitor of one of 
those large families now widely dispersed throughout 
the Eastern, Western, and Southern states, that have 
furnished marked types of the sturdy integrity and 
intelligence of the New England character. The name 
of John North first appears in the list of " freemen of 
ffarmintowne," for October 12, 1669. He was included, 
with his sons John and Samuel, among the eighty-four 
proprietors who resided in the town in 1672. He died 
in 1 69 1. The Farmington colony was the first offshoot 
from the church colony of Rev. Thomas Hooker at Hart- 
ford, Connecticut, which came from England in 1635, and 
the mother town of many Connecticut villages. 

John North had six sons and three daughters: his 
descendants are now numbered by the thousand, and 
are scattered from Maine to California. Among them 
are found soldiers in three American wars, a long line 
of physicians,^ college presidents and professors, lawyers, 
ministers, teachers, manufacturers, and men of affairs. 

1 See " Life and Writings of Dr. Elisha North," by H. Carrington 
Bolton, Ph.D., his grandson, published in 1887. 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 3 

The Second Congregational Church in Berlin — origi- 
nally a part of Farmington — was organized in 1775, 
and at the head of its catalogue of fourteen hundred 
members stands the name of Deacon Isaac North, fourth 
of the family in this country and great-great-grandfather 
of Edward North. He was baptized by Rev. Samuel 
Goodrich (the father of " Peter Parley "), who preached 
solid doctrinal sermons under an antique sounding-board. 

The maternal great-grandfather of Edward North was 
Daniel Wilcox of East Berlin, who died in 1789, the 
owner of a landed estate on the Mattabesset river, 
that was large enough to furnish an ample farm for 
each of his thirteen children. Of his paternal grand- 
father, Colonel Simeon North, who died at Middle- 
town, Connecticut, August 25, 1852, at the age of 
eighty-seven. Doctor North wrote in his diary of that 
date : " My earliest memories were associated with him. 
When I was a boy, he often rode out to my father's 
from Middletown on business. He always came in an 
old-fashioned, two-wheeled carriage, and was always 
telling stories and smoking cigars. He received con- 
tracts for making firearms from every President from 
Washington downward." 

His father, Reuben North, was the eldest of a family 
of five sons and three daughters. He inherited his 
father's business as a manufacturer of firearms, but 
abandoned it early in life, and devoted his attention 
to farming, as did most of his brothers and progen- 
itors. He was in fairly prosperous circumstances, and 
a God-fearing, churchgoing man, of the typical Puri- 
tan New England type. On the day of his death 
his son made this entry in his diary : " I did hope to 
have seen my father again, this side the grave. He 
was a father who lived in and for his children, and they 
loved him, and will gratefully cherish his memory. He 



4 OLD GREEK 

loved honesty and hated hypocrisy." He did the best 
he could for his boys, and sent two of them, Edward 
and Josiah, to Hamilton College, whither their steps 
were turned by the influence of their uncle. Dr. Simeon 
North, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1825, and the 
fifth president of Hamilton College.^ 

Of the boyhood of Edward North, we catch many 
glimpses in his early home letters and his subsequent 
writings. He united with the Second Congregational 
Church of Berlin, December 4, 183 1, when eleven years 
of age. That early profession of faith revealed the 
intensely religious nature of the boy, which widened 
and deepened with advancing years. 

His preparation for college began with Ariel Parish, 
principal of the Worthington Academy at Berlin, after 
sundry experiences in the public schools. The follow- 
ing paper, found among Doctor North's manuscripts, 
contains a delightful description of the district school- 
house, the schoolboy Hf e, the young lady teacher ** who 

1 Of Edward North's five brothers, Alfred, who died in 1894, was for 
fifty-five years a deacon of the Second Congregational Church of Berlin, 
and for forty-two years town clerk and treasurer. He was also clerk and 
treasurer of the church and society, and for twenty years superintendent 
of the Sunday school. A local record says that Alfred North "was gen- 
eral counselor and referee for the town. The people came to him in their 
perplexities and sought him in their troubles. When the new church was 
to be built in Berlin, he was appointed to prepare a statement of the 
amount which each member of the congregation ought to give. It was a 
difficult task, yet the sum he assigned to each name was cheerfully paid, 
and the church was built." Twice he represented the town of Berlin in 
the state legislature. Another brother, Frederick, who died in 1897, Pos- 
sessed the same personal characteristics which made his brothers' lives so 
full of good and gracious influences. He also rendered a long service as 
deacon in the Congregational church. A third brother, Josiah Wilcox 
North, graduated at Hamilton College in 1848, and at the Yale Divinity 
School in 1852. He was pastor of the Presbyterian church in Geneseo, 
Illinois, 1852-54, and in Como, Illinois, 1855-56, when failing health 
compelled him to abandon the ministry. He died in 1882. 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 5 

was a goddess to the East Berlin school," and a tribute 
to the Worthington Academy and its teachers : 

How IT Once Was 

Sixty-three years ago the East Berlin schoolhouse stood 
in a corner of the woods, where the road from Titus Penfield's 
came to its meeting with the road leading to the gristmill. 
The schoolhouse was surrounded by woods, in which the 
trees were mainly white oaks and black oaks. Many of the 
white oaks were tall, straight, magnificent trees that were 
afterwards felled and carried to Middletown for shipbuild- 
ing. In summer the schoolhouse was an attractive place for 
children. No modern kindergarten could boast a longer list 
of outdoor sports. The noon mark on the sill of the south 
window was carefully watched by a committee of vigilance ; 
and when the creeping shadow announced the time for a 
nooning, away we scampered with shouts and lunch baskets, 
for the cool spring under the basswood in the glen. The 
broad leaves of the basswood made convenient extempore 
drinking cups and the way we exchanged dainties and 
pickles from the lunch baskets was a schooling in Yankee 
shrewdness, with here and there a touch of sentiment for 
which the modern kindergarten has no equivalent. When the 
lunch baskets were emptied, there were searches for straw- 
berries and blueberries and red raspberries, and sweet flag 
and wintergreen, and flowers for the teacher's table. This 
made the noon hour a constant delight. If we were too far 
away to hear the rapping on the window that called the school 
for the afternoon session, then the flowers for the teacher 
softened her rebuke, and inspired an inward resolve to do so 
some more. The summer teacher was a goddess to the East 
Berlin school. Her graceful, ladylike movements, the music 
of her voice, her kindness to the hurt and troubled children, 
her brightness in dealing with diflicult lessons, are well 
remembered. 

Her sensible way of dealing with English grammar gave 
life to a lifeless text-book, and when the awful school com- 



6 OLD GREEK 

mittee made its official visit in Sunday raiment, and expressed 
its satisfaction in highly ungrammatical phrases, the way the 
teacher exchanged critical smiles with her advanced scholars 
was adroitly dramatic. And now the moss-covered marble 
tells the story of her brief, beautiful, unwedded life I 

In winter the East Berlin schoolhouse was crowded with 
grown girls and hardy farmers' sons. The teacher was a 
man toughened to all the asperities of school keeping. In 
1832 Julius N. Dowd had on his roll of pupils one hundred 
East Berlin names, and he had wonderful skill in deahng 
with all sorts of character and all stages of development. In 
the center of that small schoolhouse was a red-hot stove 
surrounded by two rows of benches, and the amount of 
oxygen dealt out to each pair of lungs was neither large nor 
undiluted. Mr. Dowd had a rare gift for appealing to the 
higher motives. This created an atmosphere most favorable 
to studiousness and good order. He kept a ruler on his 
table, but seldom used it except when he heard recitations in 
concert, as if he were a maestro conducting an orchestra. 
These recitations, in which all the school followed the lead 
of the teacher in a sort of rhythmic concert, were very pop- 
ular and helpful to the backward and dull. They fixed in 
the memory for all coming years such useful facts as the 
arithmetic tables, the rules of grammar, the boundaries of 
the United States. Every such exercise closed with one of 
the Psalms of David ; and there are grandmothers now living 
who can repeat to-day the Psalms thus memorized sixty-two 
years ago. 

But the chief glory of Berlin sixty years ago was the 
Worthington Academy. The building had been erected by 
a few citizens who made heavy personal sacrifices, because 
they believed in the vital value of advanced scholarship. 
What they did for the good name and prosperity of Berlin 
brought back an immediate and large reward. Under the 
enterprising leadership of Principals Noah B. Clark and 
Ariel Parish, the academy attracted many pupils from neigh- 
boring places. The social and intellectual life of the village 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 7 

was quickened, enlarged, and elevated. Its boys and girls 
were made ready for higher usefulness as fathers and citizens, 
as mothers and teachers. The Sunday preacher was quick- 
ened to a higher eloquence by the bright young faces in his 
audience. There was a new life in the Sunday school, and 
Doctor Gridley, the superintendent, was puzzled to find suit- 
able teachers for so many learners, hungering for the bread 
of life. 

Alas that the Worthington Academy should have gone to 
decay! To revive it, under the changed conditions now 
existing, would be impossible without a generous endowment. 
But if the history of Berlin is ever fully and worthily written, 
there will be a pathetic brightness in the story of its short- 
lived academy. 

Equally suggestive of the lasting impressions of boy- 
hood which remained with Doctor North is another 
paper, entitled ** Remembered Teachers," read before 
the Oneida County Teachers' Institute, some extracts 
from which follow. The paper opens with an exquisite 
tribute to the mother, "the first teacher." 

Remembered Teachers 

The first remembered teacher is the loving mother who 
kisses into life her boy's dormant intellect; the patient, 
skillful mother who helps the organs of speech to win their 
lisping mastery of gutturals and sibilants; the ingenious 
mother who monograms knowledge on cookies and turn- 
overs, and teaches the alphabet from the cast-iron legend 
on the kitchen stove ; the always busy mother, never too 
busy to answer a thousand questions with wisdom's apples 
of gold in pictures of silver ; the poet-mother who frescoes 
memory's chambers with bright patines of immortal song ; 
the orthodox mother who somehow contrives to organize an 
ethical harmony between Mother Goose and the New England 
Primer ; the wary, vigilant mother who gives forewarning of 
Satan's pitfalls and cunning snares ; the tender, God-fearing 



8 OLD GREEK 

mother, teaching our Saviour's litany at her knee, in the 
evening twilight; the hopeful, trustful mother, never doubt- 
ing that her prayers would be answered, and that her boy 
would choose the right way at the parting of the paths : may 
Heaven's sweetest sunshine reward the loving fidelity of the 
first remembered teacher, the type of saintliest motherhood, 
the holiest thing alive, who inspires faith in woman's worth 
and trust in all things high. 

Very marked and memorable is the transition from child- 
hood and the mother-teacher at home, to boyhood and the 
maiden-teacher in the woods, 

Where sits the schoolhouse by the road, 

A ragged beggar sunning, 
Around it rank the sumachs grow, 

And blackberry vines are running. 

Not easy to be rubbed out is the memory of those long 
walks, morning and evening, under a homemade straw hat, 
with feet innocent of shoes, with a lunch basket in one 
hand and Webster's spelling book in the other. In the 
schoolhouse there is not a breath of rebellion against the 
easy empire of Beautiful Goodness. It is the old-time 
empire of the Greek KaXoKdya^ta, reappearing in the 

Maiden with the meek brown eyes, 
In whose orbs a shadow lies, 

and in the shadow a refuge from all schoolboy miseries. 
She can sing too, with a throat that throbs like a robin's, 
and when she leads her school in singing, they watch her 
throbbing throat 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony. 

What with the music in her throat, the queenhood in her 
look, and the lily in her hand, KaXoKdya^ta had no earthly 
use for the pedagogic ferule — except for ruling the copy 
books. Her wish was law before it was half expressed. 
Even the burly butcher's boy instinctively pulled off his hat 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 9 

in her presence, when, with bleeding feet, he brought wild 
azaleas from the forest to decorate her table. 

Alas that the reign of ILaXoKayaOia should have been so 
brief in that - summer school in the woods I Alas that not 
content with the devoted loyalty of her juvenile kingdom, 
KaXoKayaOia should have yielded to the blandishments of a 
selfish, horrid, persistent monopolist of a lover, who carried 
her off one hymeneal day to warble lullabies in a select 
family school. 

This delightful summer idyl at our school in the woods 
was followed by a gloomy winter of discontent and suffering. 
We could have forgiven the winter schoolmaster for being a 
man, if he had revealed any manly qualities, or any touches 
of the human sympathy that makes the whole world kin. 
In putting away childish things, he had forgotten that sym- 
pathy with childhood and youth which interlaces the entire 
fabric of life with golden threads of poetry and power. 
Each day he disclosed some new ugliness in shape, gesture, 
or voice, until he might have sat for Homer's Thersites, 
or Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, and might have made 
Timon's confession, 

I am Misanthropes, and hate mankind. 

Hatred of grown men is bad enough, when we read of it in 
books. Hatred of innocent children, when we see it in the 
schoolroom, is fiendish. It would be pleasant to believe 
such hatred impossible. But what other key can solve the 
mystery of this tyrant's cruelty? What decent defense or 
motive could he have for pulling hair and pinching tender 
arms ; for shutting up timid children in a dark, stifling dun- 
geon ; using gags for whisperers ; and prodding the laggards 
with a round ferule, armed with iron points at each end, like 
an oxgoad ? How else could he take delight in disgraceful 
penalties, compelling small boys to stand on high desks, as if 
in a pillory, with gags between their teeth, to be gazed at 
and pelted with paper balls, or seizing an offender by the 
coat collar, and dragging him to the middle floor of the 



10 OLD GREEK 

schoolroom ; or lifting a heavy culprit by the ears, until, in 
one case, well remembered, the culprit's ears were marked at 
the base with a bloody Hne ? 

Revenge and wrong always breed their kind. There was 
a reign of terror in that school, but no studiousness. The 
schoolmaster was hated by young hearts wholly unused to 
angry passions : 

Full well the busy whisper circling round, 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frownedo 

To say that a teacher shall never have recourse to corporal 
punishment, would be Hke sending an officer into battle on a 
crippled horse, with a broken sword. The teacher stands 
among his pupils in loco parentis. In the schoolroom he 
represents law, authority, and good government. No good 
government can sustain itself without physical support. 
Cases may arise where the teacher's only refuge will be 
in corporal punishment. Even exclusion from the school 
may sometimes call for physical power. Give the teacher 
this support, by all means. If a good teacher he will use it 
very rarely, always without passion, and with parental ten- 
derness. He will remember that the sunshine of a kindly 
appeal will often accomplish what corporal punishment, 
inflicted in a tempest of wrath, would have attempted in 
vain. 

The next teacher was also a green graduate from college, 
but as different as light from darkness, as the milk of 
human kindness from the gall of vindictive wrath. Wholly 
unselfish, he forgot himself in the great work that was given 
him to do. Untrammeled by printed text-books, he found 
a larger library in the ancient forest that surrounded the 
schoolhouse. Indifferent to theological shibboleths, he 

found 

Books in the running brooks, 

Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 

A Pestalozzi without knowing it, a Socrates in his contempt 
for lucre, an Agassiz before Agassiz's name had become a 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD ii 

household word, by the sorcery of a rare personal mag- 
netism he converted his classes into eager, insatiate 
searchers after knowledge. He went with them on scien- 
tific explorations in the woods and fields. He taught them 
how to know the tree by its bark and leaf, the bird by its 
plumage and song, the fish by its shape and habit. Each 
boy and each girl in that wide-awake school had at home a 
growing collection of plants, or minerals, or shells, or birds' 
eggs, or insects, or woods, all neatly and accurately labeled, 
and yielding more of genuine joy to their owners than their 
fathers ever knew from gathered crops or bank shares and 
mortgages. If they were not treasures laid up in heaven, 
they were at least free from the canker of sordid invest- 
ments. You ask me how that queer teacher quelled dis- 
order ? There was no such word as disorder in the school's 
dictionary. All eyes and ears, all hands and feet and hearts, 
were so busy after new knowledge, that disorder was a thing 
unknown. 

The next figure in our gallery of teachers stands before 
memory's eye, clearly drawn, with something of the majesty 
of Michael Angelo's Moses. Tall, straight, and sturdy, as if 
he had lived his youth on the hills, among singing pines and 
sweet-blooded maples, his manly physique offers no hint of 
vacillation or weakness, or compromise with difficulty. And 
his outward form is true to his innermost qualities. If he takes 
an angry bull, he takes it by the horns, and keeps his own 
anger in quiet subjection. If it is a lion that meets him, the 
lion has found his Samson. He uses very few words, and 
they seem all the fewer because they are apt to be monosyl- 
lables. He never belittles a great thought with sesquipe- 
dalian verbosity. He loves his garden, his books, his 
students, his home, his wife, and his many children. As 
they multiply in numbers about his table and his fireside, 
so his heart's cherished wealth increases, and his daily joy 
is enlarged. Talk to him of the triumphs of art, and he 
replies, pointing to his bright and happy children, " Moving 
pictures are the best." 



12 OLD GREEK 

We pass on to another reminiscence. The following win- 
ter brought a new schoolmaster, more advanced in years, yet 
younger in heart, quick in sympathy, and ready with what- 
ever wins the confidence of children. Long experience had 
made him sage without making him savage, and without 
chilling the unselfish fervor of a childlike spirit. He en- 
throned the Bible in his school and his daily life, yet no 
pupil could have guessed the name of the church where he 
preferred to worship. 

What gave uniqueness to his method of teaching, and 
what keeps his memory most green and grateful to-night, 
was his habit of holding exercises in concert reciting. It 
was a method peculiarly his own. When the school day 
neared its close, bringing signs of fatigue and inattention, 
he would take his place on the platform and give the 
welcome call for recitations in concert. The older classes 
enjoyed the privilege of rehearsing their familiar stores of 
knowledge. To the younger classes it was an unmixed 
delight to follow the lead of the teacher's voice, keeping 
time and cadence with their older schoolmates. " Now," 
said the schoolmaster, waking up a tired boy who had 
dropped asleep over DaboU's Arithmetic, " now we will see 
if we can find any music in the multiplication table." 
Using his ferule as if it were the baton of a corypheus, 
leading sixty or seventy reciters with his own clear and 
musical voice, he guided them with the masterly skill of a 
Strauss, and with a rh3rthmic effect as undoubted as that of 
a skilled elocutionist in the recital of Poe's " Raven " or 
"Annabel Lee." 

Many other tables are repeated in the same way. The 
list of recitals in concert includes all the counties of the 
state, all the towns in each county (this, by the way, all 
came to pass in the seven-by-nine nutmeg state of Connecti- 
cut). The list includes choice extracts from Milton and 
Cowper, the months of the year, the books of the Old and 
New Testaments, and a complete English grammar prepared 
by the teacher himself. Finally, with a solemnity that was 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 13 

closely akin to worship, all voices joined in reciting the 
115th Psalm. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but 
unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's 
sake." 

I know not how far this method has been tried in other 
schools, and in more recent years. Of course, its utility has 
clearly defined limitations. It is not the supreme exercise 
for training independent thinkers, robust philosophers, public 
debaters, and intellectual athletes. 

But there are many facts, tables, paradigms, and formulae, 
which the memory carries through life as ready tools for 
doing all sorts of intellectual chores. By this method of 
reciting in concert, children learn by an easy process of 
absorption, without effort, and without the need of books. 
What is thus memorized becomes a part of the mind's 
texture and growth. Had this teacher been a linguist, he 
might have made a valuable experiment in the teaching of 
Greek and Latin paradigms. Children born to parents who 
speak two languages master the two as readily as one. It 
is not impossible that children trained to recite in concert 
the Greek and Latin paradigms, or the French and German 
paradigms, would find the pentecostal gift of tongues as easy 
to be mastered as the multiplication table and the Ten Com- 
mandments, in the old Connecticut schoolhouse. 

The next academy teacher was a blameless, godly man, 
somewhat indolent, yet overrunning with good nature and 
learned saws. He had reached the downhill of life, had 
been a teacher since he left college, and had outlived his 
intellectual sharpness and hunger for new acquisitions. In 
plain language, he had become a hack of the schoolroom. 
He always made the same prayer, with a nasal whine that 
would have seemed less monotonous had he used the prayer 
book. His mind had lost its enterprise, and was content to 
move in smooth, familiar ruts. The same study was taught 
by him as it always had been, with the same nut-brown text- 
book, the same illustrations, the same well-worn traditional 
Joe Millerisms. He had a kind of neolibrophobia. A new 



14 OLD GREEK 

text-book was his special abhorrence. He had no sympathy 
with the perplexities of a beginner in Latin, Greek, or mathe- 
matics. Instead of putting himself in the place of a begin- 
ner, and patiently teaching him how to use his own faculties 
and solve problems for himself, he gave an ex cathedra 
response to each question, and that was the end of it. 

When young teachers are urged to enlist for life in the 
work of teaching, it should always be with a special exhorta- 
tion to carry with them the enthusiasm of youth, and to keep 
clear of the perilous ruts of a school-worn hack, and so to 
live that each to-morrow shall find them better than to-day. 
The teacher's years are spent with the young. This fact 
ought to help him to resist the deadening influence of 
routine work. The fault will be his own, if he drinks no 
elixir of life from the exhaustless overflow of youthful 
enthusiasm that surrounds him. If hq keeps clear of a 
degrading bondage to text-books, he will be himself a con- 
stant learner. His own knowledge, culture, and force of 
character will grow wider and deeper from year to year. 
By teaching less from books than from knowledge, and by 
freely imparting what he knows, he will make daily progress 
in wisdom, in culture, in self-reliance, and in power to 
impress himself upon others. The atrocious crime of being 
a green teacher, with wisdom teeth all uncut, and with spurs 
yet to be won, is less atrocious than the crime of presuming 
that the world is growing no wiser as it grows older ; that 
there can be no progress in text-books and methods of 
instruction, and that the motto of the schoolroom should 
be, " As it was in the beginning, so it now is, and ever 
shall be." 

On August 25, 1875, the Second Congregational 
Church at Berlin celebrated the one-hundredth anni- 
versary of its organization, with exercises solemn and 
appropriate. Doctor North had been invited to write 
the poem for the occasion ; and his rhymes supplied 
the single ray of humor in the long and interesting 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 15 

exercises. The poem was a picture of a Sunday morn- 
ing service in the Second Congregational Church of 
Berlin fifty years before, and it included a rhythmical 
reference to each of the families prominent in the 
church and in the social and political environment of 
the town, in 1825 and thereabouts. It opened with this 
amusing description of himself, a five-year-old youngster 
among the worshipers : 

Make it a Sunday morning, eighteen twenty-five. 
Your rhymer — dumb, demure, diminutive, 
And grave with all the griefs that pile their lead 
On souls to whom five years are gone and dead ; — 
Your clumsy rhymer, his side pocket bulged 
With gingersnaps, his memory indulged 
With scripture texts 'twined with his mother's curls, 
In garments made by Gurdon Ellsworth's girls, 
Perfumed with fennel, as with Gilead's balm. 
Enters yon ancient house of prayer and psalm. 

Then follows a picture of the preacher — a picture 
worthy to rank with Oliver Goldsmith's rural pastor in 
the '' Deserted Village " : 

A hush of reverence exiles worldly cares. 
When Parson Goodrich mounts the pulpit stairs. 
His people love him as a faithful friend. 
Prompt to rebuke and valiant to defend. 
With good name spotless as the hose that sees 
The clasp of shining silver at his knees. 
No lust of lucre chills his love for souls. 
His modest virtues shun the blazoned rolls 
Of earth's renown ; content if faith foresee 
His Master's welcome at the final day. 
His prayer beside the couch of suffering 
Inspires the hope no healing skill could bring. 
Each fireside joy and hidden woe he feels, 
And many a woe to God alone reveals. 



l6 OLD GREEK 

The weary mother bears her heavy weight 
More uncomplainingly, when through the gate 
His gladdening presence brings the dear relief 
Of godly sympathy with household grief. 
The baptized children gather at his knee 
And lisp their little hopes with ringing glee, 
Nor dread the grave Westminster catechist, 
Whose Sinai ne'er forgets the loving Christ. 

There are many other evidences that Doctor North's 
thoughts rested often on the scenes and incidents 
of his boyhood. One of the most touching is the fol- 
lowing poem, written while in college, to the memory 
of a favorite brother who died during his absence from 
home : 

On a Brother's Death 



They tell me that the sere brown turf 

Was moved, three weeks agone, 
Within that grave-ground, where is laid, 

Beneath the chiseled stone. 
The dust of some whose tones were once 

FamiHar to mine ears ; 
And some whose sands ran out before 

I knew the need of tears. 



They tell me that my brother sleeps 

Beneath that lifted earth, 
And that a silent shadow broods 

By his un lighted hearth. 
Ah ! well I know my mother's heart 

Is bruised and bleeding now, 
And — far away — I yet can read 

The anguish on her brow. 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 1/ 

III 
I see her sit with clasped hands 

And lips that move in prayer, — 
God's love be near her in this hour 

Of wrestling with despair ! 
And from within the vale of death 

May Faith have strength to bring 
That hope and comfort which shall rob 

Bereavement of its sting. 

IV 

I cannot — would not — lay the ghosts 

Of those returnless years, 
When that dear brother shared with me 

My gladnesses and tears : 
I press my hands upon my eyes, 

And to my full heart come 
Mixed, thronging memories of days 

When all our world was home ; 

V 

When to the near and granite hills 

That dipt our eager ken, 
We shouted in the cool gray dawn, 

And nutted in the glen ; 
When, hand in hand, we hied to school. 

With hearts and voices blithe. 
For life betrayed no canker then 

And Time no gleaming scythe. 

VI 

Poor aching heart ! forego thy dream, 

For it availeth naught : 
Life hath subhmer, sterner truths 

Than childhood ever taught. 
Then nerve thyself, O bleeding heart ! 

For struggles yet to rise, 
And gather from the griefs of earth 

New longing for the skies. 
College Hill, December, 1844. 



1 8 OLD GREEK 

Here is his lament of after years, on returning to the 
old home, around which center the memories of boyhood : 

You spend ten minutes in planting a tree. Youth forward 
slips. You leave home to push your fortunes on the crowded 
thoroughfares of trade, enterprise, ambition. After your tem- 
ples have grown white with the blossoms of age, when your 
brow is corrugated with cares, you filch a week of repose and 
hurry back to your childhood's home. 'Tis a sad visit. Your 
father sleeps in the graveyard on the hill. Your mother trem- 
bles with infirmities. Your schoolmates are scattered over 
the wide world. The schoolhouse itself is a ruin. The picket 
fence that hems in the little garden, where your first horticul- 
tural venture was to plant a cent's worth of baked peanuts — 
that picket fence is gray with moss and broken. The old well 
sweep, that once seemed to you like a giant angler's rod and 
line, is gone forever. Gone too is the cedar clump, where the 
squirrels chattered and the whippoorwill shrieked in the sum- 
mer gloaming. The spring where you slaked your thirst on all 
fours is dried up. Every object flings a sorrow to your heart, 
save one. That one cheerful object is the elm tree you planted 
when a boy, that stayed at home while you were a wanderer, 
that, true to the promise of the Scotch Laird, kept on growing 
while you were sleeping, that now stretches its long arms, like 
a guardian divinity, over the decayed and bereaved home- 
stead; the memorial tree that smiles you a welcome from 
each of its bright, winking leaves, and tells you that your boy- 
hood's history is not a blank or blackened page. 

These reminiscences of Doctor North's boyhood 
end with an ode to his native state of Connecticut, 
written just as he was graduating from Hamilton Col- 
lege, in which it appears that, while not unwilling to 
poke a little fun at the nutmeg state, his heart had not 
been weaned from it : 

Connecticut ! thy name in rhyme 
Hitches like sawmill's gait ; yet sweet 



INCIDENTS OF BOYHOOD 19 

And pleasant is thy Sabbath chime 

Of bells to call the willing feet 
Of thy meek Puritans to where 

They worship God with psalm and prayer : 
And tho' thy onions move eye-waters — 

Tho' barren are thy granite rocks, 
And gossipful thy countless daughters — 

Tho' many a byword rudely mocks 
The glory of thy tea-drunk talkers — 

Yet lovely as a rose half-shut — 
Thrice lovelier than these windy Yorkers — 

Art thou, my own Connecticut ! 

Hamilton College, July, 1841. 



CHAPTER II 

STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 

A Reminiscence of Professor Oren Root — The College 
Colloquies — The Valedictory Address — A College 
Poem — A Tribute to the Early College Professors — 
College Honors — The Classic Authors — College Life 
IN the Old Days — Some College Rhymes. 

Edward North came to Clinton in 1835, to reside 
in the family of his uncle, President North, and to 
prepare for college in the Clinton Grammar School, of 
which he was afterwards the principal for one year, and 
for more than fifty years a trustee. Two years later he 
entered the freshman class of Hamilton College. The 
following memorandum, written fifty years afterwards, 
tells of his first day in college, and preserves a pleasant 
reminiscence of his colleague in the faculty. Dr. Oren 
Root, professor of mathematics, who, next to Doctor 
North, was longer in the service of the college than any 
other professor : 

I was examined for admission to college by Tutor Oren 
Root, ^^^. It was his last service in the capacity of a college 
tutor. The examination was held in No. 8 Kirkland Hall, 
which had been Tutor Root's room for three years. While 
the examination was in progress, Joseph S. Sherwood, after- 
wards valedictorian of the class of 1840, came in with a copy 
of Webster's Dictionary Unabridged, which he laid upon the 
table as a parting token of good will from the class he repre- 
sented. The sophomores of that year were not so unlike other 
sophomores that they would have purposely executed that 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 21 

generous maneuver for the aid and comfort of a trembling 
freshman, nor was Tutor Oren Root a man to accept pay for 
neglecting his duty. Nevertheless, the timely arrival of that 
Webster's Dictionary Unabridged seemed to have a lubricating 
effect, and the new freshman was launched without a hitch upon 
undergraduate billows. 

The eleven o'clock bell was ringing on the first Thursday in 
September, 1837, when the aforesaid freshman started out, with 
a copy of Day's Algebra, for his first recitation in college. 
Meeting Horatio G. Buttrick on the campus, he inquired the 
way to the freshman classroom. " South College, North Hall, 
second story, back corner," was the reply. There the freshmen 
came together for the first time. Not knowing what else to do, 
we kept our seats when Professor Marcus Catlin appeared and 
took his seat in " the bear box." He was tall, straight as an 
arrow, and awe inspiring. He had a subterranean voice, that 
came up seemingly from unfathomed depths, with no play of 
the features, and hardly any movement of the lips. His first 
remark was, that it was customary for students to rise from 
their seats when a college officer appeared in the classroom. 
We made that first recitation under the discouragement that we 
had been guilty of a grave misdemeanor. 

His career in college, as is shown by the journals he 
kept at the time, did not differ in any essential way from 
that of the average college student in those days. They 
show that he was regular in his habits of study, reading, 
and recreation ; that he was earnest and open in his pro- 
fession and practice as a follower of Christ, participating 
in the college prayer meetings, and attending regularly 
the services in the village church ; that he was one of 
the ardent members and proselyters of the old Union 
Society — an institution which, with its rival, the Phoe- 
nix, made up a large and exciting part of the college 
life in those days, but even the memory of which has 
now departed ; and that, with his piety and his studious- 
ness, he was always a boy with the boys in innocent fun 



22 OLD GREEK 

and frolic. An entry in his diary for 1849, ^^ March 5, 
the day on which General Zachary Taylor was inaugu- 
rated President of the United States, illustrates this fact : 

It was precisely such a day and night as that on which and 
before which General Harrison was inaugurated in 1840. I 
remember it well ; for I was then a junior, and was one of 
a parcel of patriotic students who *' ratified " the inaugura- 
tion at Washington by holding a meeting in the chapel, 
when half a dozen daring flights of balloonist eloquence 
were made by as many gaseous undergraduates, including 
myself. We had music also by the college band, of which 
Marsh, now dead, was the corypheus. 

Throughout his college Hfe, Edward North was easily 
the leader, in all the scholarship tests, of the twenty-two 
young men who graduated with the class of '41. He 
participated in the prize speaking contest as a freshman, 
and won the first prize. At the junior exhibition, on 
May 6, 1840, the theme of his oration was "The 
Alliance of Liberty and Literature " ; and he also par- 
ticipated with C. J. Lowrey (who died in Brooklyn in 
1888) in a colloquy entitled "The Philosophy of Laugh- 
ing," of which he was the author, and which closed the 
exercises. At the Commencement exercises on July 28, 
1 84 1, he delivered the valedictory oration, his topic be- 
ing " The Perversions of Educated Mind " ; and again 
there was a colloquy, entitled " Woman," of which he 
was the author, and in which he participated with Luther 
Conklin (who died in Rochester, New York, in 1888). 

These colloquies, as well as several others which 
Doctor North wrote while in college or shortly after his 
graduation, are preserved among his papers. They are 
bright and amusing dialogues on some current phase of 
social or political life. The colloquy, a popular feature 
of school and college exhibitions in those days, has long 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 23 

since disappeared from these exercises. The temptation 
to reproduce one of these colloquies here, as a sample 
of Doctor North's versatility as a writer, is resisted in 
deference to his own opinion of them. In his diary 
for 1849, March i, appears the following characteristic 
entry : 

I received by mail to-day two solicitations for colloquies 
which I wrote while in college. Such solicitations are made 
every year, about this time, when the academy boys are pre- 
paring for their spring exhibitions ; and they worry me not a 
little. I sadly fear that the memory of these " youthful indis- 
cretions " will offset that of any good which my life's labor 
may bring forth. " The evil that men do lives after them." 
I always refuse of late to give up these colloquies, and do 
what I can to suppress them ; but the more I try, the more 
they refuse to be suppressed. Every year the knowledge of 
them breaks out in a new spot, and I am baffled. 

And so the colloquies are buried away with a mass of 
other matter from Doctor North's pen, and with the 
suggestion that, since they were so frequently sought 
after, they must have been as good of their kind as 
anything in the line of colloquies then available. 

From his farewell words to his classmates, spoken on 
Commencement day, some extracts are taken ; they re- 
veal the same felicity of expression and high religious 
purpose which mark his later writings : 

Valedictory 

Classmates : They tell us that we have reached the end of 
our college career. For one, I can hardly believe it. To me 
it seems but as day before yesterday that we assembled for the 
first time in the freshman recitation room — a green cluster in 
the vineyard of letters — when our faces were new and strange 
to each other, and when college life, with all its peculiar reality 



24 OLD GREEK 

of romance, was a curtained mystery which we were eager to 
penetrate. 

We are now to enter upon new and more active duties ; but, 
amid all the stir and bustle of the great Babel world, "Old 
Hamilton " shall not be forgotten. For here we have forged 
our thunderbolts and burnished our armor for the keen con- 
flicts of mind. Many, too, are the fun-lit hours which we have 
made merry around our college hearth, while forgetting, in the 
beguilements of mirth, " the wearisome but needful length " of 
our daily duties. And then our long and lazy and delightful 
rambles in the classic old woods, amid scenes of green and 
rural beauty, which have walled in our desires and walled out 
the world, unite with a throng of grateful associations to hallow 
the soil of Clinton, and render it a Mecca shrine for the pil- 
grim thoughts of coming years. 

Human life is distinguished by eras, or prominent periods, 
which lift themselves from the long flat level of mere animal 
being, and are boldly relieved against the sky of the past. One 
of these eras we this day commemorate — an era which will 
ever stand out from our dull monotony of years, and be gilded 
by the last rays of aged memory, even as parting day will linger 
and play on a mountain's brow. 

At this point we commence the journey of life, as one would 
commence a pilgrimage through Sahara. Our path is through 
a weary waste, where no water is, over blistering sands. The 
sirocco breath of time will soon brown and wrinkle the brow of 
youth. We shall be tempted and entreated and mocked by 
the mirage illusions of hope. We must bow our faces in the 
dust and suffer the storms of affliction to go over us. 

Could we, for a moment, lift the veil which hides the future ; 
could we know upon whose brow among us the finger of Provi- 
dence had written a blighted bloom and an early grave ; or 
could we foresee the fiery trials, the days of darkness, the dis- 
appointments that await us — how might we start back and 
shudder at the chill shadows of our dismal destinies. 

Yet here we stand, upon the verge of the broad battlefield 
of Life — here we stand, each snuffing the smoke of the con- 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 25 

flict that rages afar, and each eager to flesh the sword of his 
maiden genius. Four years we have laughed away, happy 
hearted and careless of the future. We have lingered a while 
by the same fountain of learning ; but henceforth our paths are 
divergent. Heaven knows where, and when, we shall meet 
again ; but wherever and whenever we meet, and under what- 
ever circumstances — whether steeped to the lips in poverty 
and neglected suffering or loaded with honor and emolument 
— God grant the time may never come that we cannot take 
each other by the hand, and look each other in the eye, and 
boast that we have been honest men^ that all our aims have 
been our country's, our God's, and truth's. 

Beautiful upon the mountains will be the feet of him that 
bringeth the good tidings of salvation ; glorious the reward of 
him who shall stand up manfully in defense of justice and 
right j and though more quietly won, yet not less heartily en- 
joyed, his boon of rejoicing and praise who shall minister by 
the bed of sickness and death. 

We cannot here suppress an affectionate and earnest tribute 
of gratitude to those who, in their zeal to enlighten us in the 
wisdom of the schools, have mingled the severe teachings of 
science with the voices of kindliness and sympathy, and who, 
while they spread feasts for the mind — tempting as the honey 
of Hybla and the waters of Pieria — have not forgotten to 
invite the soul to that divine and purer fountain that flows 

Fast by the oracle of God. 

Blessings be on them, and a happy length of days — our gen- 
erous instructors ! 

Thus, classmates, have we laid our last offerings — the min- 
gled and tear-wet offerings of the heart — upon this altar of sep- 
aration, and with a willing pledge of continued and cherished 
remembrance and regard, it only remains for me to bid you — 
one and all — a final and kindly adieu, and may God bless you, 
my classmates ! 

Many reminiscences of his college course, with deli- 
cate allusions to characteristics of each of his classmates, 



26 OLD GREEK 

appear in the poem entitled " Forty-One," which Doctor 
North deUvered before the Society of Hamilton Alumni 
on July 20, 1864. In the third section of this poem, he 
paid poetic tribute to the classical writers to whose study 
his life was devoted. 

Our voyage long, our daily biscuit dry, 

We yet could boast most glorious company. 

Blind Homer's harp hung near, and when we taught 

His groping hands to grasp it, we were caught 

Up to song's highest heaven, and bathed all o'er 

In melody that charmed wild ocean's roar. 

Barefooted Socrates our deck planks trod. 

In dress a clown, in wisdom like a god. 

He raised our souls from sensual, sordid aim 

To love pure joys and nurse devotion's flame. 

Demosthenes immortal copy gave 

For later patriots who have homes to save. 

With voice and purse, heart, hand and all 

Most freely yielded to his country's call. 

Home foes he smote with words that made them reel, 

And foes abroad he met with foeman's steel. 

Grand ^schylus was there, well buskin'd and intent 

While winning fame in tragic tournament, 

To teach us how the centuries conspire 

To hymn his praise who dares with heart of fire 

Fling proud defiance at the despot's chain, 

Then die for men's good and for freedom's reign. 

The Attic Bee breathed melodies that greet 

The soul like psalms of Israel's singer sweet. 

Telling of laws supreme, eternal, strong. 

That surely punish falsehood, pride, and wrong. 

Ah ! shipmates, had we not a golden time, 

When all the antique kings of prose and rhyme 

Brought out their treasures vast and manifold, 

Their goblets rough with legends rich and old, 

Each crowned with wine that sang a coaxing lay 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 2/ 

Before it kissed the lip with perfumed spray ; 
When all the wizard spells of speech were shown, 
And all that buttresses the thinker's throne, 
With brilliant fabrics Grecian art had spun, 
To deck the souls in boys of Forty-One. 

The conclusion of the poem is a beautiful embodiment, 
in stately meter, of Doctor North's intense love of the 
college to which he dedicated his life : 

The flag that floated from our tapering mast 

In days too calmly beautiful to last, 

That flag for which boon Backus gave his life, 

And Davis braved the brunt of long-drawn strife. 

And Dwight brought eloquence in honeyed store. 

And Penney all the wealth of consecrated lore. 

And others noblest attributes of soul. 

Thither our hearts, like needles to the pole, 

Turned and re-turned with thrills of filial pride 

To hear its triumphs chanted far and wide — 

That flag whose blazoned folds proclaim 

Conquests of " Light and Truth " in Christ's dear name ; 

Conquests that Kirkland's faith in vision saw. 

That Norton, Catlin, Fisher, labored for ; 

Conquests that great, good hearts have yearned to speed. 

And voiced their yearning in the generous deed; 

Conquests that living champions push to-day. 

Wherever wrong and falsehood keep their sway — 

We love it yet ; and when new, youthful crews 

Throng to its annual call, we cannot choose. 

But join our broken accents to the sound 

Of farewells shouted to the Outward Bound. 

From hearts re-warmed with fire of buried years 

Our prayer goes up thro' grateful, joyous tears. 

That broader argosies may homeward bring 

Far richer spoils of lore than we can sing ; 

That brighter laurels than have yet been won 

May glorify thy name, fair Hamilton ! 



28 OLD GREEK 

Under the date of 1862 is a manuscript which recalls 
the college and the college life of Doctor North's time 
more vividly than any published material of which I am 
aware. Incidentally a fine tribute is paid to President 
Davis, to Doctor Noyes, the first professor of chemistry, 
and to Professor Marcus Catlin, Doctor Root's prede- 
cessor in the chair of mathematics. Then in conclusion 
comes another panegyric of the Greek authors, who are 
" the same yesterday, to-day, and onward to the end of 
time." 

Hamilton College in the Forties 

To outsiders who have never tried it, and to insiders who 
have tried it but a lustrum or less, college life may seem to be 
monotonous and flat. Concededly its peaceful annals show less 
of stir and perilous adventure than a naval expedition against 
rebel fortresses. Even a presidential campaign throws out 
larger circles of excitement than a commencement or a prize 
competition. Yet college life is not without its realities of 
romance that are sometimes stranger than recorded fiction; 
it is not without its idyl chapters of impassioned experience, 
and its personal events that enlist the deepest of youthful feel- 
ings, and color the whole current of subsequent life. When 
memory is allowed to travel back over a period of a quarter of 
a century, it reports changes in college men and things, in col- 
lege customs and laws, that are often startling and impressive. 

Twenty-five years ago, the walls that shelter us to-day were 
familiar to eyes as bright with youthful enthusiasm as any that 
see them now, and some of the brightest were the first to be 
sealed in death or darkened with sorrow. 

Ah ! but there were merry circles, and pungent jests, and 
ringing laughter, and endless fun under these same gray old 
roofs, twenty-five years ago ! Names now prematurely chiseled 
on sepulchral marble were then answered to by voices whose 
bubbling gayety sounded like a prophecy of eternal youth. 
Names now embellished with solemn titles, earned from delib- 
erative bodies by years of consecrated labor, names that appear 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 29 

in newspapers and catalogues like Homer's balanced ships, with 
oars on either side, were then saucily clipped, punished with 
quibbles, and bandied from mouth to mouth with all the 
abandon of a rollicking obscurity. 

Names now called in congressional and legislative halls, for 
their ayes and noes, were then scribbled by college Hogarths 
beneath wonderful caricatures in which eyes and nose played 
most fantastic tricks. Men whose sermons and speeches and 
books now come in easy litters then labored with desperate 
agony at the birth of an essay or a synopsis. There was unlim- 
ited freedom of speech — enough of it to satisfy a French Jac- 
obin. College laws and ordinances were thoroughly discussed, 
carefully weighed in the balance of exact ethics, and generally 
found wanting. Professors and tutors were recklessly blown 
up, in public and private, by intrepid intellects that have since 
been metempsychosed into the meekest of blown-up professors 
and tutors. 

In the outward appearance of things, and in material accom- 
modation, a quarter of a century has brought about noticeable 
changes. North College was a barren building, unfinished 
within, and unoccupied, twenty-five years ago, save by bats, 
rats, and lumber. The senior came here for his kindlings, and 
the timid freshman stole hither to rehearse that first awful dec- 
lamation. Thither, too, he was sometimes beguiled and taken 
in as a candidate for Eleusinian mysteries more collegiate than 
classic. The stone building now occupied by the cabinet was 
then another pile of ruins. In its transition state from a college 
commons, or refectory, to a museum of natural science, it was 
only redeemed from utter waste by a convenient carpenter's 
bench, where furniture was made and mended of a Saturday 
afternoon. 

Older memories than mine would dwell at length on the pri- 
mordial period when that college refectory was the theater in 
which was enacted, each day, a domestic serio-comedy, in three 
hurried parts, with trochaic interludes of hungry students run- 
ning in for cigars, cookies, colored candy, and small beer. The 
veracious historian must admit that college kept a sutler's estab- 



30 OLD GREEK 

lishment, and eked out its precarious revenues by vending 
extraordinary creature comforts not included in the legitimate 
three-act drama of eating and drinking. Think of it, alumni 
colleagues of Albert Barnes and Edward Robinson ; think of 
it, Alma Mater serving as a buxom nurse of intellectual babes 
and a chronicler of small beer ! But then Alma Mater, like 
Halleck's Fanny, 

Was younger once than she is now. 

In those days no " watch-tower of the skies " with its sidereal 
discoveries and observations drew the attention of European 
astronomers. There was a portable telescope, however (not to 
bilk the historian of his little fact), three feet long, that used to 
be mounted on a movable tripod, and through which Saturn 
could be seen on clear nights, looking like a Quaker's hat. 

There was no gymnasium either, but in place of that classic 
provision for physical development were three long woodsheds, 
with fronts always hospitably open to the lovers of Celtic exer- 
cise in bisecting billets of wood. 

There was no distinct building for the laboratory. Chemistry 
was taught in a Plutonian cellar, beneath the floor of what is 
now the senior classroom. Its smoked ceilings, vaulted furnace, 
with blacksmith's bellows, its endless array of retorts and cru- 
cibles, its weird subcellar, where the galvanic battery was kept, 
like a thunder machine under the old Greek stage, were so many 
suggestors of an alchemist's den. The brick floor of that old, 
dark laboratory was worn smooth with the feet of twenty classes 
of students, to whose memory chemistry will always have pecul- 
iar associations more easily recalled than described. 

With the single exception of the presiding genius of that Plu- 
tonian laboratory, the men who composed the faculty twenty- 
five years ago have either gone to their last rest, or yielded 
their places to younger incumbents. 

Pass down the eastern lawn to the college cemetery, and the 
heaved-up turf will surrender to memory's vision the forms of 
the departed. President Davis will stand beside the towering 
shaft that carries the record of his eventful career. Although 
his tall form, crowned with white locks, is a leaning Pisa tower, 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 31 

you cannot help feeling that it has had its day of strength and 
majesty. You feel that under the graciousness of that sweet 
and courtly manner sleeps the energy of a Wellington. You 
feel that you would be happy in his friendship. You hear his 
talk about his old pupils, his boys at Yale, at Union, at WiUiams, 
at Middlebury, at Hamilton, with all the loving pride of a father 
relating the exploits of his own children, and you are sorry you 
could not have had him for your teacher. 

Yonder brown stone presses the dust of a mathematician whose 
Latin epitaph tells that he died more loaded with cares and 
honors than with years. Straight as an arrow, symmetrical and 
modestly eminent in shape and gesture, he is taller than his 
monument by his head and shoulders. The old wondering of 
freshman year comes back to repeat itself in the memory. 
You wonder how Professor Catlin can sit so still in his 
cramped, hard seat in the chapel — never moving a facial mus- 
cle, never changing his position through those interminable 
bulky sermons. You wonder how he can manage to say so 
much, with such a penurious outlay of monosyllabic gutturals ; 
how so much real warmth of heart can keep itself glowing under 
that stiff mathematical crust. You wonder by what legerdemain 
he contrives to mesmerize his classes into such genuine attach- 
ment to himself, without at all overcoming their horror of 
the calculus. You recall the scenes at his deathbed and 
funeral. 

There stands Doctor Noyes, the first professor of chemistry. 
How the heart leaps even at fancy's view of the sorcerer who 
played with the mysteries of science as deftly as Thalberg may 
sport with the keys of a piano. There he stands, yet looks 
awkward, embarrassed, and lost, until fancy transfers him to 
that marvelous laboratory, in the rear of his residence, which 
is as much a part of himself, as its shell is a part of the tortoise. 
It was a sin and a shame that an auctioneer was permitted to 
stand in that indescribable sanctuary of natural science, or, if 
you will, that Babel and chaos of chemical apparatus, and scat- 
ter its treasures to the hundred bidders. It should have been 
piously removed, body and contents, to the college grounds. 



32 OLD GREEK 

surrounded by iron palisades, and kept as a concrete, ocular 
demonstration that Walter Scott's Antiquary is a possible 
character. 

If anybody wanted anything, he went to Doctor Noyes. 
No matter what it was he wanted, be it a thermometer or cab- 
bage plants, a steam engine or a cure for cancer, the analysis 
of an ore, a recipe for curing hams, a sure way to make money, 
or any conceivable pair of incongruous wants, and Doctor Noyes 
was sure to fill out the order, with anecdotes of Daniel Web- 
ster, his classmate, and Doctor Backus, thrown in ad infinitum. 
If there was a disease to be cured that all other doctors pro- 
nounced incurable, or a problem to be solved, or a machine to 
be invented that had already upset other men's brains. Doctor 
Noyes was the man to do it. It must be something desperate, 
or it was nothing to him. As a sad discoronation of all this 
glory, he must needs ride to the village every day, and step out 
of the native majesty of this character into the beastly degrada- 
tion of the barroom indulgence. 

Twenty-five years ago there was a good degree of industry in 
college, but less of hard work was accomplished than now. 
The course of instruction was less complete, less rounded and 
thorough. No instruction was given in German, and only in 
French by some windfall of a native teacher. The introduc- 
tion of German as a required study is due to the linguistic 
enthusiasm of Rev. B. W. Dwight, formerly a tutor. 

In elocution there was no systematic drill. Individuals made 
spasmodic efforts to cultivate the voice, and there was much 
shouting in North College and the neighboring woods, when 
days of public performance were imminent. Fine writing was 
thought well of, but no prizes were offered in this department, 
and the standard of belles-lettres excellence was not very high 
or very clearly defined. There was then no danger of intellec- 
tual dyspepsia from the hearing of class lectures. In the 
classical department, the class of 1841 heard two lectures, and 
no more. The first was a " Defense of Classical Studies," and 
the second, by Professor J. Finley Smith, was a sketch of the 
Greek drama. College honors were worked for by a few in 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 33 

each class, but the average attainments in scholarship were con- 
siderably less than now. 

In the year 1843 class honors were aboHshed altogether. 
This revolutionary step was taken at the earnest request of 
students, in an hour of infatuation and evil counsel. The 
results were unexpected and curious. Although students had 
declared that college honors were an execrable cheat, and no 
longer to be submitted to, as soon as the faculty took the peti- 
tioners at their word, and granted their request, the honors 
conferred by the literary societies suddenly assumed an extraor- 
dinary value. When the class valedictory was extinguished, 
the highest ambition was to be a society valedictorian. To be 
elected a society president was thought to be quite a brilliant 
beginning to a career of letters or public honors. All sorts of 
combinations, conspiracies, briberies, and electioneering tricks 
were resorted to by mature heads on juvenile shoulders to carry 
a society election. The cloisters of study were desecrated by 
Tammany Hall rowdyism. The unseemly and untimely death 
of the literary societies was caused by the temporary abolition 
of college honors. Of this fact there can be no reasonable 
doubt, although the ghost of these doomed societies was not 
utterly given up until after the restoration of college honors in 
1855. The disease that carried them off was so slow and 
insidious that many supposed it to be paralysis, discord, or 
debt, when these were simply manifestations of a long-stand- 
ing complaint. 

The period of seventeen years during which college honors 
were not worked for or distributed is one which no friend of 
the college can look back to with any degree of satisfaction, 
except as an illustration of the folly of trying experiments which 
have been so often repeated under more favorable auspices 
in older institutions with the same disastrous results. The mid- 
dle period, when college honors were refused to generous aspi- 
rants for scholastic laurels, is a dark age in the history of the 
college. It makes a beautiful eloquence to say that students 
should study for the love of study, that knowledge should be 
sought for its own sake, that emulation is a dangerous passion 



34 OLD GREEK 

to arouse, that it leads to envies, bitter heartburnings, and 
the most unwarrantable consumption of midnight kerosene. It 
so happens that the teachers who talk in this fine way are 
always salaried men, and generally titled men, men who work 
for dollars, and such other pay as they can get, honors, influ- 
ence, and self-content. Turn the tables upon one of the self- 
deluded teachers, and make him a martyr to his own theory, 
take from him his salary, his titles, his social position, and tell 
him to teach for the love of teaching. Tell him that knowl- 
edge is too sublime a thing to be imparted for any smaller 
consideration than its own sake. Assume that teaching ought 
to be its own exceeding great reward, and he will suddenly dis- 
cover that he has a loud call to carry on a farm, or to run a 
gristmill, or to keep a hotel. 

A college is a world in miniature. The child is father to the 
man, and the student is sire to a large variety of professional 
workers. The student is human and likely to be influenced 
most effectively by the motives and rewards that influence his 
elders out in the world. 

If it is right and honorable that a clergyman should be paid 
for serving the church, and a statesman paid for serving the 
state ; if it is right and honorable that a physician take pay for 
saving life, and a soldier for saving his country, why should the 
motives of the student be arraigned, if he asks for the unmer- 
cenary satisfaction of a college honor, or an honorable record 
of what he has honorably achieved. 

After all, college life is as real and should be as earnest as any 
later period. By whatsoever test they are measured, college 
honors are worth as much as any honors to be won in a career 
of statesmanship, or letters. If the satisfaction they bring to 
the winner and his friends is a true test of their value, college 
honors are worth more than those that come after the sensi- 
bilities are blunted and the heart indurated with selfish maxims 
and practices. If Macaulay had been asked which gave him 
the greater joy, an election to Parliament or a college prize, 
he would have said, " the college prize, ten times as much." 

The features of the landscape about us are changed. Lines 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 35 

once straight are curved now. Trees that had sentineled the 
grounds for half a century have been removed, and others are 
making slow haste to throw shadows equally far. The buildings 
are more in number. College men and customs are different. 
But the old Greek authors are unchanged. They are the same 
yesterday, to-day, and onward to the end of time. Here the 
Past and the Present shake hands and rejoice together in a 
panoramic gallery of portraits, venerable of aspect, marked 
with deep lines of thought, wreathed as to their foreheads 
with asphodel chaplets, and radiant with immortal bright- 
ness. Twenty-five years have not changed the delightful^ 
grandfatherly Herodotus, that garrulous gossip of history, peer- 
ing bizarrely through his trumpery collections of facts and old 
wives' fables, zealous to traverse sea and land in quest of 
myths, proverbs, oracles, and on dits^ yet too indolent to clarify 
a muddy sentence, or to rescue character from a mob of false 
assailants, or to pluck up drowned truth from a well of 
obscurity. 

Unchanged, too, are Socrates and Xenophon, bright Dioscuri 
in the galaxy of literary friendships, the former a walking cate- 
chism, ugly to look at, frosty in manner, yet kindly at heart, 
earning his right to riddle everybody with questions by chal- 
lenging all Athens to corner him in debate ; the latter showing 
such promptness to obey the calls of duty and pity, such forti- 
tude in perilous adventure, as we admire to-day in the heroism 
of a Winthrop or a Burnside, with that modest blush upon his 
brow, which the "sage's olive, the historian's palm, the victor's 
laurel," cannot wholly hide. 

Close behind him, yet taller by his head and shoulders, stalks 
the blind Hexametrist of Scio's rocky isle, " with all his travel- 
ing glories round him," with his harp chiming to the rush of 
impetuous, serried words that take fire, like the arrow of Acestes, 
with their own sublime velocity. 

Time writes no wrinkle on the brow of the arch orator of 
the Attics, nor takes aught from the bitterness of his hatred 
toward those who hate the freedom of Greece. His words are 
still at work, blasting with sarcasm whoever would sap the 



36 OLD GREEK 

supremacy of his fatherland. What are twenty-five years to a 
poet who has already buffeted the waves of eighteen or twenty 
centuries, with sinews still lusty? They are nothing to Theoc- 
ritus, that thoughtful lover of his books, his rustic haunts, 
and his mother. Though living from hand to mouth while 
tabernacled in flesh, and often vainly assiduous to catch Dame 
Fortune's smile, no sooner was he fairly dead than he began 
to live in earnest. And the same is true of his gloomy com- 
panion, ^schylus, from whom he differs as vintage time differs 
from sullen winter, as a cottage at milking hour differs from a 
beleaguered castle, or the Thousand Isles from Niagara, or 
Claude Lorraine from Raphael, or "The Cottar's Saturday 
Night " from " Dies Irse." 

And there is the Greek lexicon, the same old plethoric book, 
that was so patient to be thumbed and cudgeled and cross-ques- 
tioned twenty-five years ago, with its yellow leaves scribbled 
over with the names of companions in study, transferred now, 
some to the senate roll, others to sepulchral marble. The lexi- 
con will be faithful to its part in keeping green the memory of 
those choice companionships, long since sundered, and never 
to be on earth reunited. Like to the shadow of a great rock in 
a weary land, its calm presence allures and refreshes. Its voice- 
less dirge over time's changes is more sweetly plaintive to the 
heart than that of the leaves that strew the autumn brooks in 
Vallambrosa. Its leaves, exhaling an odor of study, " hke the 
first bloom of those sciential apples that grew amid the happy 
orchard" — its leaves still retain the nepenthean fragrance of 
those far-off academic hours, in whose quiet shadows the hearts 
of comrades were knit together, at a shrine of learning toward 
which their loyal thoughts will fondly turn like Persians to the 
east, from every land that holds them. 

While a junior, Doctor North wrote the following de- 
scription of college life — a unique experience in a man's 
life — which is as true to-day in the smaller American 
colleges as when it was written. 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 37 

College Life 

College life is a titbit of romance — a dainty dish of the 
poetry of life — a sunny and flower-pranked offset from the 
straight dull paths of vulgar existence. While a preparation 
for the usefulness, the honors, and the emoluments of profes- 
sional labor, it is, at the same time, an exception to its drudg- 
ing habits, its thorny and perplexing cares. 

It is a Hteral episode in the course of being. We step aside 
from a beaten and sun-baked pathway to tread on green and 
living velvet. Choked with the hot and dusty air of peopled 
marts, we turn away to inhale the free and bathing breezes of 
retirement, to exhilarate in the freshness and the fragrance of 
an atmosphere all our own — an atmosphere untainted, and 
unshared by the lungs of the rabble. We exchange the bad 
smells of groceries and markets for the perfume of flowers 
" born to blush " for us alone. 

A community composed entirely of young men, brought from 
every section of the country, and thrown together in promiscu- 
ous order, forms no meager subject for study and speculation. 
One might suppose that those distinctions which are recog- 
nized the world over between men of different grades and pro- 
fessions, politics and religions, would, when the representatives 
of each are brought into near and daily contact, produce un- 
pleasant and grating discords. Yet such is seldom the case, at 
least in our smaller institutions. On entering the halls of Alma 
Mater, each one, as if by mutual consent, buries the tomahawk 
of worldly warfare, throws aside his bundle of prejudices, and, 
thus prepared for a different order of things, is welcomed to a 
new society and a new existence. 

He finds himself in a little world, shut out from the great 
universe around him — a world full of the ardors and aspira- 
tions of high-thoughted youth, of buoyant hope and excited 
feeling. His sympathies are at once enlisted in associations of 
a peculiar and engrossing character. He becomes one in a 
knot of congenial spirits, clustering together like a milky way 
of stars. His animal and spiritual elasticity, how often soever 



38 ^ OLD GREEK 

weighed down by the " wearisome but needful length " of col- 
lege exercises, so often recovers itself in the excitements of the 
playground or the social group, the page of fiction or the hall 
of debate. 

Thus circled by so much that calls forth the romance of his 
nature — "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," with the 
star of promise ever in the ascendant — his hours glide away 
like a dream of Eastern fable. 

Not that students abjure their religious creeds or political 
tenets. But their pursuits and interests are so much apart 
from the ordinary vocations of life, and their thoughts are 
so effectually drawn off from their accustomed channels, and 
directed into those which are new and for the time more 
absorbing, that they seem lifted above the common mass of 
humanity, wherein they are superior to the world, and Hke the 
celestials on their cloudy seats, they can look down and smile 
at the littlenesses of party intrigue and the foolishnesses of 
sectarian dogma. While they reverence the Deity, they can 
rally one another, in a joking way, on their theological pre- 
dilections. While they cherish a pure flame of patriotism, 
they can laugh to scorn the foxery and the sordidness of 
demagogues, though the future may find even themselves burn- 
ing like incense to hke divinities. 

'Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat 
To peep at such a world ; to see the stir 
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd ; 
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates 
At a safe distance, when the dying sound 
Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear. 

The student enjoys a freedom of action, an independence of 
thought, and a looseness of expression which test and bring to 
light the purity of his heart, the rightness of his principles, the 
depth of his sympathies. He doffs the phylactered mantle of 
ceremony — that largest garment in the wardrobe of the Phari- 
see, that lying device "to set a gloss on hollow welcomes," that 
sure resort when love begins to sicken and decay — this he 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 39 

burns upon his college fire, and speaks his mind like an honest 
man "in plain and simple faith." 

College friendships are therefore of the truest and heartiest 
stamp. They are free from that sickly and mincing sentimen- 
talism which clings to the intersexual affections ; there is noth- 
ing boy-and-girlish about them. Their attachments are manly 
and magnanimous, their sympathies generous and whole- 
hearted. 

Nor, on the other hand, have the student's intimacies any 
resemblance to those selfish or ambitious connections which 
are formed in after years by those who kneel to the golden 
calf of Mammon, or whose kindlier feelings are drowned and 
forgotten in the brazen noise of Fame's trumpet. 

Our Alma Mater presents a pleasing specimen of rural 
beauty, with life to enjoy it. For it is a painful or at best a 
morbid pleasure to survey a lovely landscape, enameled with 
every living gem that the most fastidious eye could covet, when 
friends are far away and there is none to know its existence 
save your own solitary self. Byron affected to find society in 
solitude, and he raves, in mellifluous meter, about " a pleasure 
in the pathless woods, and a rapture on the lonely shore." 
But Byron was a wicked man and a cold misanthrope. His 
mind was diseased and debased. With him domestic happi- 
ness had become "a root of bitterness," and the milk of 
human kindness had become sour and loppered in his bosom. 

If a stranger could wander over our college grounds at the 
cooling close of a summer's day, when the dark poplars seem 
instinct with life, as the fitful leaves wink and tremble on their 
frail stems ; when the whole west is glowing and burning like 
insulted virtue, and when every windowed niche in the airy 
halls holds its quiet and happy dreamer half buried in pillows, 
and framed by the ample curtains that wave to the gentle 
pressure of the breezes of twilight — if, I say, a stranger could 
behold a scene like this and not feel his heart subdued and 
mellowed by its softness, its repose and its luxury, his bosom 
can be the home of but few and feeble longings for the broken 
bowers of Eden. But hark ! list to that flute ; it has a dulcet. 



40 OLD GREEK 

dying fall, a swanlike sweetness, and its low and quavering 
notes creep upon the dreaming ear "like the sweet south," 
and call up to the busy brain a thousand soft and delicate 
images of love and lovehness. 

Nor is this the sole music of the hour. For, ever and anon a 
ruffled head looks out from its depth of pillow, and drops a 
lively and tart joke on its victim below, who, starting from his 
drowse, like the lion from his lair, shakes his locks, and hurls 
back a ready retort that "would move wild laughter in the 
throat of death." Straightway the entire population is gal- 
vanized with merriment, and shrill and stirring are the shouts 
that ring cheerily out upon the evening air. 

We intended to venture a remark on another striking feature 
of college life, viz. its excision from female society, and con- 
clude with a few shrewd comments on the invention of " senior 
parties " and their influence. But time fails. 

Hamilton College, May 27, 1840. 

These extracts reveal the profound impression left 
upon Doctor North's mind by the associations and influ- 
ences of his college life. His feelings found frequent 
voice in rhyme, both then and later. This v^as his trib- 
ute to his classmate and roommate, the son of the Rev. 
Dr. Asahel C. Kendrick, who died during the junior 
year: 

On the Death of a Classmate 

There is beside our college hearth a drear 

And vacant chair. In the now silent hall 

A step is mute that late brought mirth and frolic. 

In the dark icy earth there is a grave 

New made and grassless. Tis a grave of hope. 

How like quick lightning from a sudden cloud 

Came Death among us ! and a generous one 

Whose laugh rang loudest in the jovial ring 

Was chosen for his dread, life-killing touch. 

The lofty brow is lowly laid in dust, 



STUDENT IN HAMILTON COLLEGE 41 

And each the other greets as kindred clay ; fe 

The earnest eye nor speaks its language now, 
Nor the determined lip its eloquence. 
How holy are the garments of the grave ! 
How they do consecrate the unbreathing form 
Within their pulseless folds ! The dead are pure. 
How e'en their faults like silver leaves 
Do bathe themselves in the clear waters of 
Devoted memory, and thence gleam out as virtues. 
Pleasant and precious is a living friend ; 
More precious still the soft remembrance of 
A buried love. A living friend may change. 
But when on the unchanging past cold Death 
Has pressed the seal of silence, and its dear 
And hallowed memories are treasured up, 
Estrangement ne'er shall mar their pleasantness. 
We laid him to his rest, and left him there 
In a chill wintry grave whose trees o'erlook 
The village of his youth ; and, wailing, stoop 
They to their mournful trust. But kindly spring 
Will weave a mantle for his lowly couch, 
And sacred shadows of the living leaves 
Brood o'er the grass-grown mound in silent grief. 
Sweet be the sleep of a once merry chum ! 
Glad memories of gone and fun-lit hours 
Shall visit thy hushed home by day, and oft 
By night in dreams of better days shall thought 
Go Hngering back to Kendrick's early grave ! 

When he graduated he put his farewell into these 
lines ; 

On Leaving College 



Ye gray old walls ! whose classic shade 
First awed me into love of lore. 

And hushed my thoughts till they betrayed 
A holier impress than before : 



42 OLD GREEK 

Whose parting echoes wake from sleep 
The wildest throb heart ever knew, 

From you I turn with eyes that weep 
Hot tears to seal my last adieu. 



Since I obeyed thy belfry chime 

My spirit has a different tone : 
I've grown in love with Olden Time 

And with the Present feel alone : 
I like the flash of stars at night 

Far better than a maiden's eye, 
And I can kneel in their pure light 

Unmelted by a maiden's sigh. 

m 

My soul is thronged with new desires, 

And Thought is nursing them by day, 
And dreams are fuel for their fires, 

And Hope wove them wings, till they - 
Impatient for their destined sky — 

Seem bursting from my prison-breast. 
Like eaglets of the daring eye, 

That part to leave their native nest. 

IV 

Ye jovial hearths and sheltering walls ! 

Where I have spent my happiest day- 
Ye merry friends and ringing halls ! 

I tear me — for I must — away ; 
Farewell, ye walks ! I go to fill 

My station in a world of hate : 
I feel, even now, its rushing chill, 

And yet farewell ! I cannot wait. 

Clinton, August, 1841. 



CHAPTER III 

PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 

A Brief Experience as a Lawyer — Appointed Professor 
OF Ancient Languages — Tribute to his Predecessors 

— Reminiscences of President Henry Davis — First 
Experiences in the Professor's Chair — Marriage — A 
Lyceum Lecturer — Degree of L.H.D. — Alumni Trustee 

— Acting President — Call to Albany Normal School 

— Fiftieth Anniversary of his Professorship — The So- 
briquet OF "Old Greek" — Contemporary Greek Pro- 
fessors — Resignation — Tribute of the Faculty and 
Trustees — Death — His Epitaph, written by Himself. 

After graduation, Edv^rard North spent a year as a 
tutor in a private family in Paterson, New Jersey. It 
was a year of quiet and study, and its leisure hours were 
frequently employed in writing brief poems which were 
contributed to New Jersey newspapers, in Paterson, 
Newark, and elsewhere, over the nom de plumes of 
** Thornden," " Flaccus," and occasionally over his 
initials. 

Returning to Clinton at the close of his engagement 
in Paterson, he seriously contemplated entering the 
legal profession. An entry in a notebook tells how he 
" began to read law in the office of Othniel S. Williams, 
Esq., this 19th day of September, 1842." Another 
entry, under date of May 24, 1843, says, " Edward North 
began receiving from O. S. W. as clerk in his office a 
stipulated compensation of i^2.oo per week "; and a later 
entry indicates the payment of a quarter's salary on 
this basis. 

43 



44 OLD GREEK 

The decision to adopt the legal profession was 
made against the wish and expectation of his family, 
some of whom had hoped he would become a minister 
of the gospel. An extract from a letter written to his 
brother Alfred, in 1843, reveals his state of mind on the 
subject : 

It is plain that you are dissatisfied with my choice of a pro- 
fession. I greatly regret to know it, but I am unshaken in my 
belief that the step I have taken is for the best. It may be 
paying myself but a sorry compliment, but you will at least 
give me credit for frankness, when I say that, had I chosen 
the ministry for my calling, I should have led an unhappy life. 
I have a monitor within which beckons me away from the 
pulpit as a place unfitted for the exercise of whatever abiHty 
God has given me. If I had your feelings on this subject, I 
should be guided by them. I have them not; therefore my 
course is different. However unpleasant it may be to act in 
opposition to the known wishes of one's friends, I think you 
will acknowledge that it would be an unworthy motive — if not 
a positive sin — to preach the gospel simply because one's 
friends desired it. 

His brief excursion into the law was unknown to 
Doctor North's children until after his death. It was 
an episode to which he never alluded. A good lawyer 
may have been spoiled when he dropped Blackstone 
and Kent for Homer and ^Eschylus, but the story of 
this volume proves that the world was gainer from the 
change of plan. To his association with Judge Wil- 
liams, Doctor North was indebted for the appointment as 
principal of the Clinton Grammar School, which deter- 
mined his future career. Judge Williams was elected 
fifth treasurer of Hamilton College (his father, Othniel 
Williams, was the third) in 1850, after the death of Dr. 
Benjamin Woolsey D wight. Between him and his 
young law pupil there sprang up a rare and beautiful 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 45 

friendship, which continued unbroken until the former's 
death, May 20, 1880. In Doctor North's journal for 
that date is this entry : 

Judge Othniel S. Williams died in the village at five o'clock. 
For forty years he has been to me a trusting and trusted friend, 
and like an own brother. Without him, life has for me less 
interest and attraction. He brought me my call to be prin- 
cipal of Clinton Grammar SchooL He made me his confidant 
in all his plans and hopes. 

While studying law in Judge Williams's office, 
Edward North was chosen principal of the Clinton 
Grammar School — the old brick structure on College 
street, recently destroyed — which while it remained 
was the most interesting landmark in the village. Here 
he was teaching when, in 1843, he was appointed Pro- 
fessor of Ancient Languages in Hamilton College. 
This call followed the untimely death of Professor John 
Fin ley Smith, the immediate successor of Simeon North 
in this chair, who died after a service of three years. 

Of his several predecessors in the chair of Ancient 
Languages, Doctor North wrote as follows, in the brief 
sketch of Hamilton College which he contributed to 
the publication entitled " The College Book " : 

In the board of instruction as first organized, Professor Seth 
Norton (Yale, 1804) occupied the chair of Greek and Latin. 
His scholarship was accurate and wide-reaching. He was apt 
to teach, and thoroughly devoted to his studies and his call- 
ing. He was more than a classroom teacher. He served 
as a living Hnk between the new college and the pioneer 
academy, of which he was for seven years the honored pre- 
ceptor. He was a leading singer in the village church, and a 
constant help to his brother. Rev. Doctor Norton, in all religious 
activities. His untimely death, in 181 8, only a year after the 
coming of President Davis, was mourned as a severe bereave- 



46 OLD GREEK 

ment to the college and the community about it. During the 
year 1817, Professor Norton was aided in the Greek classes 
by Tutor Edward Robinson (1816), who here entered upon 
that long career of scholarship and authorship which placed 
his name among the world's foremost authorities in bibUcal 
science. At the same time, Rev. Eleazer S. Barrows was the 
tutor in Latin, and in 1819 was elected the first Professor of 
Latin. In 182 1 his resignation was accepted, and in choosing 
his successor, Rev. John Monteith, Greek and Latin were 
again united. Professor Monteith's successor in 1829 was 
Rev. Simeon North, called from a tutorship in Yale College. 
Professor Simeon North came at a time when students were 
few, and when youthful faith and energy were tested to the 
utmost. For ten years he worked side by side with Professor 
John H. Lathrop, through frequent changes in the boards of 
trust and instruction. In 1839 his promotion to the presi- 
dency was followed by the election of Tutor John Finley 
Smith (1834), whom to know was to love. Professor Smith 
had boundless enthusiasm and a great heart. Careless of 
himself, he worked for others until his life went out prema- 
turely in 1843. His successor, Professor Edward North, who 
began with the embarrassments of inexperience, has given 
instruction to thirty-four successive classes.^ 

Of his immediate predecessor and intimate personal 
friend, Doctor North wrote more fully and more feel- 
ingly, in an address delivered at the first public rehear- 
sal of the Utica Musical Academy, on February 5, 1858. 
Professor Smith was one of the founders, and for some 
years the vocal conductor, of this academy. He dis- 
charged his duties " with such spirited ability and such 
self-denying devotedness as to win the strongest ad- 
miration and attachment of his associates." " I can 
speak of Professor Smith," continued Professor North, 
" with the tender reverence that is due from a pupil to 

1 From " The College Book," Hamilton College, page 245. 




Edward North in the 40's. 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 47 

the memory of a faithful and skillful teacher, when the 
one has gone to his rest, and the other has lived long 
enough to know that fidelity and skill in the teacher 
are of priceless worth." 

A prominent trait in the character of Professor Smith was 
the entire absence of affectation. Under no circumstances 
was he ashamed of his own simple and pretensionless man- 
ner. He made no attempt to appear learned and profound, 
by smothering his thoughts beneath piles of verbal chaff. Nor 
did he affect to be more devout than he truly was, by doing 
violence to his countenance, and by choking all the pleasantry 
and laughter that stirred within him. By some of his friends 
it was thought a misfortune that he stooped so seldom and so 
stiffly to ceremony and show, that he resorted so sparingly to 
the frigid phrases of a politesse which, in one of the few letters 
I have seen from his pen, he characterizes as " hackneyed and 
heartless," and in the use of which he confesses he is " but a 
bungling Ephraimite." These friends of Professor Smith were 
in error. He would have done himself a serious injury, had 
he taken pains to unlearn that indescribable naivete, which was 
to his character what fragrance is to the flower, making his pres- 
ence a pleasure even in the circles of fashion. If he had 
calculated the profit and loss of being just what he was, with 
his heart in his hand and truth on his lips, undisguised and 
transparent ; or of encasing himself in a mackintosh of heart- 
less formality, with noli me tangere inscribed on every move- 
ment, he would still have chosen the better part of a sincere, 
outspoken, unpretending child of nature. 

Among the more positive elements in Professor Smith's 
character, the love of harmony was conspicuous and con- 
troUing. He hated discords, everywhere j as well in the com- 
munity as in the choir. Harmony of every kind was dear to 
him, not more that which charms the ear in a sacred anthem, 
or the choruses of a Greek tragedy, than that largeness of 
fellow-feeling which finds pleasure in promoting the general 
good, and in forgetting personal preferences when they collide 



48 OLD GREEK 

with another's. Such was his intercourse with the world that 
he seldom made an enemy. Nor did this result from any com- 
promise of principle or any undue sacrifice of opinion. On 
the contrary, he was bold and earnest in advocating what he 
thought to be the right ; in exposing and denouncing what he 
knew to be the wrong. Yet so courteous and friendly was his 
bearing, so contagious was the generosity of his nature, that 
even envy and opposition were quietly disarmed, and brought 
to join in his desire that neighbors and associates should dwell 
together in peaceful unity. 

* * * As the best part of beauty is something no painter 
can copy, and no poetry describe, so the best part of music, its 
sincerity and earnestness, are qualities that mere drill and 
study cannot bestow. Art and practice can teach one to 
express the feelings of devotion or patriotism, sorrow or grati- 
tude, with the utmost fullness and intensity, only when the 
original seeds of these feelings lie deep down in the singer's 
or player's character. In this quality of native earnestness, 
combined with the most thorough discipline, Hes the secret of 
music's greatest power. This is the magic open sesame before 
which human hearts unbar their gates of prejudice, and give 
free access to their treasures of sympathy and attachment. 

Professor Smith was twenty-eight years of age 
when he was elected Professor of Ancient Languages ; 
Professor North was only twenty-three when he suc- 
ceeded him — the youngest full professor ever ap- 
pointed at Hamilton College. It has always been 
understood that there was some dissatisfaction over his 
appointment on this ground, due also, perhaps, to a 
feeling that kinship with the president had helped to 
preferment not yet earned ; but the real secret of these 
troubles I did not know until after Doctor North's death. 
He set down the facts in his diary, on March 8, 1852 — 
the date on which died Dr. Henry Davis, the fourth 
president of Hamilton College — an event which 
tempted to reminiscence. The introduction of this 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 49 

reminiscence seems necessary to a full understanding 
of the conditions under which Doctor North began his 
career as a professor. The entry begins with a brief 
sketch of Doctor Davis's character, and continues with 
an account of his attempt to secure the election of his 
son-in-law to the professorship of Ancient Languages : 

March 8, 1852, — Doctor Davis died about seven o'clock last 
evening. He was an invalid when I first saw him in 1836, and 
he has been an invalid ever since, growing weaker and weaker 
from year to year, until his life has at last faded out, as a cloud 
fades out in a summer sky. He was eminently courteous in his 
ordinary dealings with men, and a chance acquaintance would 
be likely to leave him without suspecting the sterner and con- 
trolling elements of his character. He spent five years at 
Union College, and his system of managing students seems to 
have been similar to Doctor Nott's. Instead of having general 
and fixed laws to which all students were expected to conform, 
he had a great many special and private methods suited to 
individual cases. His plan was not so much to govern as to 
manage. It is clear from the personal anecdotes he was in the 
habit of repeating, that he prided himself on his ability to cope 
with students on the field of intrigue, and to outwit them in the 
use of such weapons as politicians use in dealing with each 
other. I have heard him relate, with much apparent satisfac- 
tion, an instance in which he " out-generaled " Silas Wright, 
who was one of his students at Middlebury. 

In his habits of life and dress, Doctor Davis adhered to the 
old school ways. On commencement days he occupied the 
seat of the oldest trustee, in front of the pulpit, until 1847, 
when he resigned his connection with the board. One who 
has seen him on the stage will not soon forget his appearance : 
his old-fashioned dress of homespun faded blue ; his long, lank, 
and limpsy form; his woe-bespent look, and general air of 
lassitude, and feeble cough. 

He was very economical and saving; so much so that he 
managed to do what few college instructors achieve — lay up 



50 OLD GREEK 

a competence for his last years. The house which he occupied 
after retiring from the presidency of Hamilton was built by an 
education society, and was formerly known as " Charity Hall." 
It could not have cost less than ^2,000. When the society sus- 
pended operations, the hall was sold at auction, and Doctor 
Davis bought it for ^500. 

When President North was promoted to the presidency from 
his professor's chair. Doctor Davis was desirous that his son- 
in-law, Rev. Mr. Maltby, should be chosen Professor of Lan- 
guages. In spite of his efforts to the contrary, Professor Smith 
was elected. On the death of Professor Smith, in 1843, Doctor 
Davis made another and more earnest effort to secure the elec- 
tion of Mr. Maltby ; this time his plans were laid with care and 
prosecuted with vigor. A great many of his friends were writ- 
ten to and induced to address to the president letters of recom- 
mendation in behalf of Mr. Maltby. I was then boarding at 
the president's and reading law with Mr. Williams. It was 
through the combined instigation of Doctor Davis and Pro- 
fessor Mandeville that a remonstrance against my appointment 
was circulated among the students, and to some extent signed. 
At the meeting of the board in December, 1843, this remon- 
strance was read by Doctor Davis as one of his agencies for 
securing the election of Mr. Maltby. Another thing designed 
to subserve the same end was the preparation of a memorial to 
the trustees by Professor Mandeville, in which the memoriahsts 
set forth what they regarded, or pretended to regard, as indis- 
pensable qualifications for the new professor. One was that he 
should be an alumnus of Hamilton, another that he should be 
a clergyman, and a third that he should have had experience 
in giving collegiate instruction. This document was so cun- 
ningly drawn that if it had been adopted by the trustees as 
a guide to their action, the choice of Mr. Maltby would have 
been inevitable. He was the only one on the list of candidates 
who would have answered the description. This memorial 
was signed by all the faculty except the president. It had 
no influence with the board, but was set aside as indecorous. 
Doctor Davis put forth all his power of persuasion and 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 51 

intrigue ; but the board refused to be controlled by his wishes. 
Doctor Davis had the command of only two votes — his own 
and Doctor Adams's. The latter courteously remarked to me 
afterwards that he attended the meeting at the special solicita- 
tion of Doctor Davis, and could not refuse to support his can- 
didate. I saw Doctor Davis as he drove up the hill, after the 
meeting, in his old-fashioned, two-wheeled carriage, looking 
more woe-bespent than ever. I felt sincerely sorry for him. 
To see an old, feeble man so utterly defeated in a darling 
scheme, was sad enough. He was very sick, and confined to 
his bed during the whole of the following winter. 

It is a college tradition that the students undertook 
to show their disapproval of Doctor North's appoint- 
ment, by " rowing " the fledgling professor in the class- 
room; this reminiscence reveals the trying circum- 
stances under which he began his work. 

The inner history of Hamilton reveals that numerous 
professors failed, at the start, to acquire that control in 
the classroom which is the first essential to successful 
teaching. I know not by what legerdemain of person- 
ality Doctor North overcame the latent antagonism of 
the student body which confronted him on the threshold 
of his career. It was a flash in the pan. After a few 
recitations, the boys were conquered, and thereafter, to 
the very end, there was never any trouble between Pro- 
fessor North and the students, in the classroom or out 
of it. But it was an anxious experience. Four years 
later another entry in his diary contains this reference 
to the episode: 

March i, 1848. — Four years ago this morning I heard my 
first recitation in Hamilton College. I met the freshman class 
with an anxious, palpitating heart, and heard read the first 
chapter of the second book of Livy. I have just had occasion 
to consult this portion of Livy, and the very sight of the text 
brought vividly to mind all the painful circumstances of my 



52 OLD GREEK 

d^but. I was without experience, without years, and sur- 
rounded by enemies who were busy and haughty. I had but 
few friends, and they were fearful. What a change between 
now and then ! The same sky is indeed above me, but its 
clouds are gone. Countenances that then frowned dislike and 
discouragement now beam with patronage and approval. So 
wags the world. If one can only succeed in convincing the 
community that he is able to live and thrive without its aid, 
he is straightway besieged by crowds who are most happy to 
tender him their disinterested services. 

A suggestion of the relationship early established 
between the Greek professor and his students can be 
gathered from this entry in one of his earlier journals : 

May ig, 1852. — Last night there was a very slight frost on 
the hill, just enough to nip the tender shoots of the Madeira vine 
and the early potatoes. In the valley the frost was heavier. 
Six years ago there was a frost on the same day. I remember 
the sight of it clearly, as I rode over from Whitesboro after 
the birth of my first child. I remember, too, that in some 
mysterious way the news of her birth preceded me. At eleven 
o'clock I went to the recitation room, and, in place of meeting 
the freshmen, I found the room empty. On the desk was a 
generous budget of baby clothes, with the congratulations of 
the class. 

Thus began the long and serene career of the Greek 
professor : blessed in his home, inspired by his work, in 
love with all his surroundings — as witness this entry in 
his journal, five years later : 

Twenty-eight years ago to-day I was ushered into the world. 
Why this event happened, I was for some years in doubt. But 
the mystery is now cleared up. It was that I might be just 
what I am — a contented Professor of Greek and Latin in 
Hamilton College, a happy husband and father. 

Doctor North married Mary Frances Dexter, daugh- 
ter of Hon. S. Newton Dexter, of Whitesboro, New 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 53 

YorV on July 31, 1844, a year after his election to the 
professorship. 

Twenty-five years of ideal married life followed at the 
home on College Hill, broken suddenly, on May 27, 
1869, by the death of Mrs. North. Into the privacy of 
this life it is not intended to intrude ; but there exist so 
many proofs in felicitous verse, of its singular sweetness, 
that the story, as Doctor North told it in rhyme, is sub- 
mitted in small part. No year passed, while Mrs. North 
lived, that a sonnet, an ode, or a lyric, inspired by her 



1 S. Newton Dexter was born in Providence, Rhode Island, May 11, 1785. 
He died in Whitesboro, November 18, 1862. His father, Andrew Dexter, was 
the first manufacturer of cotton goods in the United States. His grandfather, 
Samuel Dexter, of Boston, left a bequest to Harvard College, the income of 
which now goes to the Professor of Biblical Literature. His great-grandfather, 
Rev. Samuel Dexter, a graduate from Harvard in 1720, was pastor of the Con- 
gregational Church in Maiden, Massachusetts, where he died in 1775. S. New- 
ton Dexter was prepared for college under the instruction of Rev. Caleb 
Alexander, Mendon, Massachusetts, who afterwards prepared the way for the 
chartering of Hamilton College by gathering funds and shaping public opinion. 
Soon after his admission to Brown University, Mr. Dexter gave up his plans for 
study, to accept a business engagement in Boston. In 1815 he removed to 
Whitesboro, where he lived for forty-seven years. In 1824 he undertook a 
heavy contract on the Chesapeake and Delaware canal. This occupied five 
years, and involved an expenditure of over two millions of dollars. In 1829 he 
became the agent of the Oriskany Manufacturing Company, and in 1832 
the agent of the Dexter Manufacturing Company of Pleasant Valley. In 1840 
he was appointed one of the canal commissioners, and in 1850 a manager 
of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica. His first wife was Laura Northrup, 
of Athens, to whom he was married October 26, 1811. His second wife was 
Mrs. Martha Raymond Gold, to whom he was married February 3, 1848. 
In 1835 Mr. Dexter was elected one of the trustees of Hamilton College. 
Straightway the spirit of his grandfather and Caleb Alexander stirred within 
him, prompting to a munificence that has linked his name honorably with 
the history of Hamilton. What William H. Maynard had done by testament 
in 1832, Mr. Dexter chose to do by immediate donation. It was one of the 
sorrows of his old age that adverse fortune defeated the full accomplishment of 
his wishes. What sacrifices and struggles he made to carry out his cherished 
purpose, and how reluctantly he gave it up, was known only to his most intimate 
friends. Yet his gifts to the college amounted in the aggregate to about twenty- 
three thousand dollars, a larger sum than any previous donor had given, unless 
we except Samuel Kirkland, whose bequest of lands largely increased in value 
with the growth of the institution. 



54 OLD GREEK 

personality, did not come from her husband's pen. A 
few samples follow : 

Birthday Rhymes 

TO M. F. D. N. 

1859 



Some fifteen happy years ago — 
It seems but yesterday or so — 
A busy running to and fro 

Of thoughts betwixt your heart and mine, 
Contrived to weave a mystic tie 
That draweth fast and tenderly, 
Keeping us one until we die, 

By human law and right divine. 



Gray hair and wrinkles hint a lie, 
If they insinuate that you and I 
Are older in our mystic tie 

Than fifteen happy years ago. 
Four times as young is nearer true, 
If you but count the hearts that drew 
Their tides of bounding Hfe from you, 

And fresh supplies of youth bestow. 

m 

Fleetly revolve the whirring years, 

They toss aside youth's jealous fears. 

And wreathe with flowers the gaping shears 

That wait our mystic tie to part. 
Woven some fifteen years ago 
When thoughts were running to and fro 
In whispered words, love-laden and low. 

Betwixt the halves of our one heart. 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 55 

Sonnet. — Home 

What maketh home? Not art when it hath spent 
Itself to please the eye, the ear, the taste ; 
Not wealth when it to uncurbed will hath lent 
The freedom of its hoards ; not all the blent 
And many rays which power and beauty waste 
To prove their nothingness : these make not home, 
Not that dear, hallowed place which the true heart 
Calls home. The pomps of Hfe and gilded dome 
May daze the outward sense, and haply some 
May stare in envy ; yet they cannot feed 
The hungry soul, or bring good angels near, 
Till Love, in truth and earnestness, appear 
To teach earth's tenants its diviner creed, 
To Hft them skyward, jubilant and freed. 

Valentine's Eve, Hamilton College, 1847. 



One Year Ago 

I 

The robin seeks the locust tree, 
And builds his new nest skillfully, 
And trills his evening song with glee, 

That should be sad and low. 
The Httle hands are turned to clay 
That beat the panes with shout so gay, 
Responsive to the robin's lay, 

One tearful year ago.^ 

n 

The crocus shoots up through the mold 
And flaunts its hues of blue and gold. 
Till aching eyelids cannot hold 
Griefs bitter, blinding overflow. 

1 James McAlpine Somerville North, youngest son of Doctor North, died 
May 10, 1863, aged two years. 



56 OLD GREEK 

Why need the crocus mock our pain 
"With flowers that greet the April rain, 
When that home joy comes not again 
That went one year ago? 

m 
Sweet hyacinths, ye have forgot 
The day that never leaves our thought, 
When coffin wreaths from you were wrought 

For snow-white, snow-cold brow. 
Your rising from dark winter's tomb 
Reminds us of a brighter bloom 
For that lost flower, whose life-perfume 

Exhaled one year ago. 

Mrs. North died two months prior to the twenty-fifth 
anniversary of her marriage. Doctor North had writ- 
ten this anniversary ode before any thought had come 
to him that it would never be needed : 

Twenty- Five Years 

I 

Come back, ye five and twenty years, 
And all your truthful records bring ; 

Come back, and whisper in our ears 
The song our grateful hearts would sing. 

n 

Tell us of youth's sweet loves and fears, 
And sunshine changing fears to joys ; 

Tell us of virtues nursed by tears, 
And life relived in girls and boys. 

in 

Tell us how winter evenings went 

With romance, song, and chivalry ; 
Of summer evenings blithely spent, 

Reading the rhythms of star-Ht sky. 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 57 

IV 

Tell us of days when wasteful war 

Consumed the country's brave and strong, 

While Faith looked through the discord's jar, 
With prayer that sobbed, "O Lord, how long?" 

V 

Tell us of that enchanted isle ^ 

That woos tired workers to its rest. 
And with old Ocean's gladdening smile 

Medicines the pain in Sorrow's breast. 

VI 

Tell us how strangest tongues were heard 
When far shores beckoned pilgrim feet, 

Yet everywhere the magic word, 
" America," was music sweet. 

VII 

Tell us, ye five and twenty years. 

All that ye know our hearts would say, 

Then add that neither smiles nor tears 
Can half express our prayer to-day. 

VIII 

Our prayer that Heaven may kindly send 

Another five and twenty years. 
And that our wedded days may end 

Where joy forgets the need of tears. 

During the earlier years of his professorship, Pro- 
fessor North varied the duties of the classroom by- 
lecturing in the lyceum courses, so popular and so uni- 
versal half a century ago, and by systematic efforts to 
build up and improve the educational system and 
methods of the state. His labors in this latter field 

1 Nantucket. 



58 OLD GREEK 

were of the highest educational value, and left an 
impress not easy to measure. 

As his cares and duties multiplied, and his health 
became impaired, Professor North gradually withdrew 
from the lecture rostrum, and confined himself to occa- 
sional addresses, on special subjects, at teachers' meet- 
ings and religious and educational gatherings. He was 
elected president of the New York State Teachers' Asso- 
ciation in 1865, and delivered a memorable address at its 
twentieth anniversary in that year. He served as chair- 
man of the Executive Committee of the University 
Convocation of the Regents of the State of New York 
in 1874 and 1875 ; and the records of that body con- 
tain the evidence of his earnest and patient assistance in 
plans for promoting the higher education. It was partly 
in recognition of this service that the Regents bestowed 
upon him, in 1869, the unusual honorary degree of 
L.H.D., previously given by the board to but two distin- 
guished men. Doctor North described the circum- 
stances attending the bestowal of this degree in his 
diary on August 4: 

At three o'clock I was summoned to the assembly chamber 
by a special messenger, and received, in person, from Gulian C. 
Verplanck, the honorary degree of " Doctor of Literature." It 
was conferred in Latin by the venerable vice-chancellor, in cap 
and robe. The Latin form I had myself prepared in the morn- 
ing, at the request of Doctor Woolworth, not knowing that I 
was braiding a wreath for my own wearing. Doctor Verplanck 
is now eighty-seven years old. I told him I considered it the 
greatest honor of my life to have received such a degree from 
his hands. 

Other honorary degrees, and elections to numerous so- 
cieties, came to Doctor North at intervals during his life. 
Madison University bestowed upon him the degree of 
LL.D. in 1887. He held honorary membership in the 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 59 

New York Historical Society, the Wisconsin Historical 
Society, and the Archeological Institute of America; 
and was a member of the American Philological Asso- 
ciation, the Albany Institute, the Oneida Historical 
Society, and many similar organizations, before which, 
at one time or another, he delivered lectures or addresses. 

Doctor North was elected an elder in the Presby- 
terian Church of Clinton in 1865, and continued service 
in this capacity until the day of his death — a record of 
thirty-eight years, and without equal for length in the 
history of the church. Nor was it a perfunctory service ; 
the Old Stone Church was very dear to his heart; its 
successive pastors found in him a true friend and a stanch 
supporter ; he was a regular attendant, rarely missing a 
communion service, and generally attending the evening 
service after listening to a morning sermon in the College 
Chapel. Twice he represented the Utica Presbytery at 
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in 
1870 and in 1876; and he was for many years, from 
1870, a trustee of the Auburn Theological Seminary. 

He was elected an alumni trustee of Hamilton Col- 
lege in 1 88 1, and shortly afterwards elected by the 
board a permanent member. Here he rendered services 
for many years on the executive committee, and was the 
link that kept the board in touch and sympathy with the 
faculty and the student body. 

In 1871-72 he spent eight months in Athens, as the 
confidential secretary of the American minister. Some 
account appears in a subsequent chapter of his experi- 
ences and impressions during this single prolonged 
absence from college duties which he allowed himself in 
fifty-eight years. 

Returning to Clinton in the spring of 1872, he 
received a warm welcome, the whole college marching 
in a body to " Halfwayup," where their chosen orator 



6o OLD GREEK 

delivered a speech of welcome. " I can not be indiffer- 
ent to so much and so sincere good feeling," the pro- 
fessor wrote in a letter describing this reception ; and 
he added this humorous comment on the resumption of 
one of the college duties for which he always had much 
distaste : 

I have been nineteen hours in Clinton, and have already 
attended two special meetings of the faculty. I have decided 
to retain the old epitaph which I prepared for myself some 
years ago: "Died of faculty meetings." I'm not dead yet, 
but the epitaph will keep. 

Thereafter Doctor North quietly continued his duties, 
with a steadily increasing responsibility in all the affairs 
of the college, and a steadily decreasing strength with 
which to carry it. The last thirty years of his life were 
much troubled by illness and by sleeplessness. Some 
of the entries in his diaries make pathetic reference to 
the difficulties under which his work was carried on : 

June 20, 1871. — Heard two classes and rode to the village, 
in spite of illness and weariness and heartsickness. Welcome 
the dreamless sleep that opens into heaven ! 

April 28, 1876. — Heard the sophomores and freshmen in 
Greek, with a dismal faculty meeting between. 

May 2 J i8y6. — In spite of a sleepless night and sickness to- 
day, I heard two classes in Greek; and wrote letters all the 
afternoon. 

May 7, 1876. — In spite of weariness and faintness, I heard 
two classes in Greek and worked on the triennial catalogue. 

March 22, 1877. — Will it be possible to attend the Presby- 
terian Council, to be held in Edinburgh, July 30, and thus 
keep the appointment announced in to-day's "Evangelist"? 
It would compel the first absence from commencement for a 
period of thirty-four years. 

April 16, 1877, — Met John Thompson, oldest student of the 
Hamilton Oneida Academy. Asked him his age. " Eighty- 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 6l 

seven." "You must make it ninety before you go home." 
" Don't ask me to stay away so long," said John Thompson. 

May 21 J 1S77. — Doctor Brown called in the evening, and 
said we must have a triennial catalogue. Yet commencement 
is upon us in four weeks ! How, then, can I go in Edinburgh ! 

December 26, 1877, — A lost day. 

September 8, i8yg. — Heard the freshmen in the Greek 
Testament at 8.45, and the juniors in the Agamemnon at eleven. 
Received a call from my classmate, Elias Flandrau Dean, and 
went with him to the library, the cemetery, and our class 
chestnut. This year our class chestnut, which I raised from 
the seed, has its first crop of chestnuts. It stands between 
the library hall and the Kirkland Cottage. 

In 1843 the faculty at Hamilton College, to whose 
number this boyish recruit had been added, consisted 
besides the president, of Professors Charles Avery, 
Marcus Catlin, Henry Mandeville, and Tutor Theodore 
W. Dwight. Professor Oren Root succeeded Professor 
Catlin in 1849, and Professor Mandeville did not long 
remain, being succeeded for a short time by James R. 
Boyd, and in 1849 by Anson Judd Upson. It was a 
small body of scholars and enthusiasts, knit together by 
ties that bind closer than kinship. Between them there 
existed a fraternal relationship that marks a beautiful 
chapter in the history of Hamilton College. These 
were days of perfect harmony and sympathetic coopera- 
tion in the faculty. 

In 1862 Professor William H. McHarg, who relieved 
Doctor North of the instruction in Latin, leaving him 
free to devote his whole attention to Greek, came into 
the faculty ; in i860. Doctor Ellicott Evans, Professor of 
Law; in 1863, Doctor Nicholas W. Goertner, Professor 
of Sacred Theology; in 1858, Doctor Christian H. F. 
Peters, Litchfield Professor of Astronomy ; and numer- 
ous others at later dates. 



62 OLD GREEK 

From this choice circle of teachers and brothers one 
after another passed away, leaving Doctor North the sole 
connecting link between the old Hamilton and the new. 
As they passed, or afterwards, Doctor North often 
put in writing his judgment of their character and 
services. Especially touching is his tribute to Doctor 
Oren Root, with whom he was associated from 1849 
until his death in 1885 — a longer period than with any 
other colleague in the faculty : 

Doctor Oren Root belonged to a brilliant line of distin- 
guished mathematical teachers, who have earned for this 
college an honorable and wide recognition. Theodore 
Strong, Marcus Catlin, and Oren Root are cherished names 
that stand for synonyms of a large share of what is most 
substantial and durable in the good achievement and good 
influence of the college during its first eighty years. We 
think of Professor Strong as an enthusiast in his chosen 
study, as a teacher who wrought dry symbols into oratory, 
and who inspired his pupils (so many of them as were inspira- 
ble) with something of his own passion for the higher mathe- 
matics. Professor Catlin is sculptured to the memory as a 
serene embodiment of strength, dignity, and duty, whose 
fires of passion were kept carefully banked, who could put to 
shame ambitious rhetoricians by compressing their plethoric 
paragraphs into a few well-chosen monosyllables, who loved 
his home and his children and his Christian hope and the 
college with a love that made his too short life beautiful and 
memorable. 

We shall think of Professor Root as a hero who wreathed 
the sword of severe science with the myrtle of natural his- 
tory. He was not the less a mathematician because he loved 
to be where he could hear the pulse of nature throb. He 
was all the more honored as a mathematician because he 
allowed there might be a useful place in the world for 
students who had neither heart nor brains for Newton's 
" Principia." He dearly loved the college to which he gave 




vg^ 



wo 






'X ^^ 



Ji o 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 63 

thirty-five years of faithful, fruitful toil. It was one of the 
comforts of his last long illness, so uncomplainingly endured, 
that he was permitted to look out upon the trees he had 
planted, upon the lawns he had cared for, and to see the 
familiar red walks thronged with young men, to whom the 
voices of nature are a discipline not less welcome than 
the teachings of the classroom and the library. 

My friendship with Doctor Root began in the spring of 
1836, nearly fifty years ago, when he was doing comprehen- 
sive work as a tutor in Latin, Greek, mathematics, and rhet- 
oric. He said to me one Saturday afternoon, when robins 
were building their nests, " Let us go down the ravine, and 
find a tree for transplanting." An appeal more potent than 
that could not have been framed. The tree we selected and 
planted that afternoon so carefully and lovingly has been 
swept away, alas ! by the tide of later improvements. But 
the love that was born in the wooded ravine has lived on 
through all the changes of forty-nine years, and to-day the 
grave will cover what the poet Horace would call his dimid- 
ium animae. We have had many pleasant walks and talks 
together. We seldom had a difference. Whenever we dis- 
agreed, he would patiently wait for the fact that would prove 
he was in the right. This was one of the secrets of his 
power, his patient waiting for the truth to assert its power. 
He kept himself in close alliance with the truth, and when 
the truth prevailed, there was no denying his share in the 
triumph. 

We were alike in our love of trees and birds and rare 
plants, only he was far more enterprising and aggressive. 
He was fond of domesticating wild plants. In his plans for 
doing this, he explored the swamps and hillsides, all the 
forests and jungles in this and neighboring counties. If 
nature had a plant or shrub, a tree or bird or rock which she 
was determined to hide away from curious eyes. Doctor Root 
gave himself no rest till he had found it out. In his charac- 
ter there was much to admire and win affection. He was 
always thoughtful and reverent. He had never a jest for 



64 OLD GREEK 

sacred things. He was generous and catholic in his sympa- 
thies and tastes. 

Doctor Root was a man of eloquence. But it was not the 
eloquence that wins the applause of listening senates. He 
keenly enjoyed all forms of beauty and power in forensic and 
rhetorical expression. He could make a very effective and 
unanswerable speech when the pressure was on him. But 
he preferred to express himself in ways more in keeping with 
his studious habits and tastes. No sermon or poem could be 
more consummate in its eloquence than the result of his 
thoughtful skill in classifying facts laboriously collected 
from distant localities, or in deducing principles and laws 
from collected facts, or in a sympathetic cooperation with 
the vital forces of nature in grouping the trees and shrubs 
and flowers that belong to the lush and tender beauty of a 
landscape in June. 

Thus are passing away, one by one, the workers with whom 
we have worked in the swift going years, and the tender turf 
is again upturned for its new enrichment of dust to dust, and 
a new inscription will tell the record of another life conse- 
crated to the work of enlarging the bounds of human hap- 
piness and aiding the reign of virtue and the kingdom of 
the Blessed Redeemer. 

After the resignation of President Henry Darling on 
April 20, 1 89 1, Doctor North was appointed acting presi- 
dent of Hamilton College — *' a most unwelcome office," 
he wrote in his annalist letter for that year, "from 
which he hopes for an early release." It is a fact of 
history within the knowledge of many yet living that 
Doctor North was very strongly urged, on at least two 
occasions when there was a vacancy in the college 
presidency, to accept election to the office. The sug- 
gestion was one which he peremptorily declined to con- 
sider. He had lived on too intimate terms with the 
college presidents, and knew too well what they had 
been called upon to bear and to suffer. Now, as on 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 65 

the occasion of the previous vacancy in the presidency, 
he was looked to, by the trustees, to name a successor ; 
and it will readily be understood that this was the most 
anxious and delicate of all the responsibilities that fell 
upon him. It involved him in much correspondence, en- 
tailed long journeys, and brought many disappointments. 

How Doctor North felt about the college, how it had 
come to be his one absorbing interest in life, was shown 
in 1864, when there came unexpectedly an invitation to 
accept the principalship of the State Normal School at 
Albany, recently vacated by the resignation of Doctor 
David H. Cochran. The Albany Normal School was 
then, as now, the most prominent of these institutions 
in the state, and already well launched upon its success- 
ful career. The position of principal carried with it a 
large increase in salary and great prominence in the 
educational affairs of the state. In tendering the 
appointment. Doctor Samuel B. Woolworth, the Secre- 
tary of the Board of Regents of the University of the 
State of New York, wrote : " I think you are the only 
man in the state whose appointment would be regarded 
with universal satisfaction." 

An offer of this character was flattering to Doctor 
North; but that it could not even be considered was 
made evident by his reply, which lets us more fully into 
his inner life and heart than any other letter he ever 
wrote, of which I am aware. The major part of it is 
printed herewith. " I am held down to the soil of Col- 
lege Hill by as many ties as were thrown over Gulliver 
during his first night among the Lilliputians " was his 
quaint way of saying that to pull himself up by the roots, 
to separate his Ufe from the life of Hamilton College, 

was impossible. 

Hamilton College, November 5, 1864. 

* * * After passing a couple of sleepless nights over the 

principalship of the Normal School, I concluded that the 



66 OLD GREEK 

safer part of ambition would be for me to be contented 
with the assurance (so pleasantly conveyed in your letter, 
and for which I am sincerely grateful) that I am thought 
worthy to be the successor of my good friend, Professor 
Cochran. 

I can not begin to tell you how hard it would be for me to 
leave the spot where I am rooted fast by twenty years of 
labor and joy and sorrow. I am held down to the soil 
of College Hill by as many ties as were thrown over Gulliver 
during his first night among the Lilliputians. Whichever 
way I turn I feel the drawing of some minute thread of local 
attachment not seen nor suspected until I fairly faced the 
question of removing to Albany. 

I admit with you that there is much to attract in a residence 
in Albany, and a wide field of usefulness in the position of 
Normal School principal. But you remember the epitaph 
reading : "I was well, I wanted to be better, I took medi- 
cine ; and here I am." So long as my friends kindly admit 
that I am useful here, I will try to forego the attractions 
of a higher position. * * * Again thanking you for the 
genuine kindness that inspires your letter and makes it a 
sacred memento of friendship, I remain. 

Faithfully yours, 

Edward North. 

In 1893 occurred the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor 
North's occupancy of the Greek chair at Hamifton 
College. It was recognized as an occasion of unusual 
interest, and commemorated in a manner unprece- 
dented in the history of American colleges. The chair 
which he continued to fill, and which had been pre- 
viously known as the Dexter professorship and the 
Edward Robinson professorship, was rechristened by the 
board of trustees, and it was unanimously ordered that 
it be henceforth known as the " Edward North Chair of 
Greek and of Greek Literature," in accordance with the 
following report of the committee: 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 6/ 

The undersigned committee, appointed on the seventeenth 
day of January, 1893, to recommend to the board some plan 
for action by them which should appropriately mark the com- 
pletion of the fiftieth year of service of Doctor Edward North 
in the faculty, report as follows : 

So far as Doctor North is personally concerned, the commit- 
tee can recommend no method which will adequately convey to 
him the high appreciation of this board for so exceptional a 
term of faithful and fruitful toil. In all departments of col- 
lege work — in the faculty, as a member of the board of 
trustees, as acting president, the diligent, faithful, untiring 
friend and supporter of the college in all emergencies — all 
alike will recognize a debt of obligation to him which no 
words can express and no act of the trustees can adequately 
recognize. 

In consideration, however, of the fact that during this long 
term of fifty years. Doctor North has continuously filled the 
chair of Greek literature, and has shed unusual luster upon that 
department of college work, the committee recommend that 
the chair so long and so ably filled by him be henceforth 
designated and known as the " Edward North Chair of Greek 
and of Greek Literature," and that this board hereby pledge its 
best efforts and invite the hearty cooperation of the alumni 
and friends of the college to the full and complete endowment 
of this chair in the sum of $50,000. 

If we can not sufficiently honor the professor for his long 
term of faithful service, we can at least thus perpetuate his 
memory in connection with his life work, and thus show our 
appreciation, in the manner most acceptable to him, of his 
great contribution to the cause of higher education. 

Theodore M. Pomeroy, 
Joseph R. Hawley, 
A. Norton Brockway, 
Committee, 

His colleagues of the faculty supplemented this 
gracious action by adopting resolutions of their own, 



68 OLD GREEK 

which reveal the tender ties that bound them to their 
senior member. 

Hamilton College, June 5, 1893. 

As our colleague, Edward North, rounds out with the 
current term fifty years of service in the faculty of Hamil- 
ton College, we rejoice to add our tribute to the universal 
gratulation. 

During these fifty years, his coworkers in the faculty, his 
pupils in the classroom, the trustees and friends of the col- 
lege, the gathered teachers of the state, all patrons of learn- 
ing within widely extended boundaries, have recognized his 
peculiar fitness for the work to which he, so long ago, was 
called. The college has gained honor in the honors brought 
to him. His dwelling on the Attic hills seemed to link our 
Greek more closely to its Hellenic home. 

Sister colleges and the University of the State of New 
York have recognized his learning in titles of ample form. 
The associated teachers of the state chose him to lead them 
as their president. The alumni of the college unanimously 
made him one of their representatives in the college board 
of trustees. 

Tenderer and sweeter to his heart must be the affectionate 
regard of the alumni of the fifty classes he has known. By 
his acquaintance with nearly every one of our now living 
alumni (1818-93) Doctor North, far more than any other, 
is in his own person the embodiment of their influence and 
their spirit. 

We pay our tribute to him for his unvarying devotion to 
the college ; for his scholarship, so rich and deep and strong ; 
for the beauty of his written, and the quaintness of his spoken, 
thought; for his love of nature and his sympathy with all 
life ; for the kindness of his dealings with each and all of 
us. The silver whitens with the years, and the gold within 
grows but the more refined. 

We make our prayer that the silver and the gold may be 
living treasures for us and for the college through many a 
coming year. 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 69 

As for the undergraduate body, they continued to 
reveal their affectionate regard for their instructor by 
the sobriquet which they always applied to him. At 
what particular period the boys first began calling him 
" Old Greek," it is impossible to say. It is certain that 
it was intended as a nickname of affectionate regard, 
never as one of disrespect. He always accepted it with 
a whimsical smile; and once he alluded to it at an 
alumni gathering : 

** Some men," he said, **are born Greek; some men 
achieve Greek ; and some men have Greek thrust upon 
them. I was born a New England Yankee. Whatever 
success I may have had in achieving Greek, I have had 
it thrust upon me in its most archaic form as the * Old 
Greek!'" 

Professor Hopkins, in his tribute to Doctor North in 
the " Hamiltonian," accompanying a portrait of the pro- 
fessor, relates this anecdote : " Several years ago when 
that gifted and brilliant lecturer, William Parsons, deliv- 
ered to a Clinton audience his lecture upon * Homer,' 
after being introduced by Professor North, he at once be- 
gan : ' In bringing this Old Greek before you ' — when 
he was interrupted by a storm of applause. The puzzled 
lecturer could hardly understand that to the sons of 
Hamilton his opening words did not suggest 

The blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle, 

but a more modern poet, teacher, and man of letters. 
And so we believe that the * boys,' gray haired as well 
as young, scattered all over our state and country, will 
dispense with all titles of dignity as they look upon this 
face, and exclaim with words not of irreverence, but of 
affection : * There's Old Greek ! ' " 

Hence it has seemed a simple matter to find the 
appropriate title for this memoir. 



70 OLD GREEK 

As the years gathered, and class followed class, Doctor 
North realized that he was approaching the head of 
the roll of the Greek professors in American colleges. 
When he resigned in 1901, he had covered a longer 
term of service, in the same institution and the same 
chair, than any other American Greek instructor. In 
this respect he outstrips all the men associated with the 
teaching of Greek in this country, Tyler and Felton, 
Harkness and Hadley, Packard and Kendrick, Tayler 
Lewis, Boise, and the rest. There must be a peculiar 
preserving quality in Attic salt ; for all these Greek pro- 
fessors were rare and individual, kept pure and sweet, 
through generations of students. 

A memorandum under date of 1890 makes a brief 
record of the services of certain of his contemporary 
teachers. " The oldest Greek professor in America," 
Doctor North wrote, " is Rev. Dr. Asahel C. Kendrick, 
who has been a teacher of Greek for fifty-nine years in 
Madison University and Rochester University. Doctor 
James R. Boise has been fifty years professor of Greek 
in Brown University, Ann Arbor University, and Mor- 
gan Park Seminary in Chicago ; Doctor Henry Drisler has 
been forty-seven years professor of Greek in Columbia 
University ; and Doctor WilUam S. Tyler fifty-three years 
in Amherst College." 

The question whether Doctor North's service as a 
Greek professor was the longest yet rendered in a single 
American institution, may be open to some doubt. He 
was elected in December, 1843, and completed fifty- 
seven years of service in December, 1900, entering 
upon his last term of instruction in 1901, his resignation 
taking effect in the fall of that year. So that when he 
speaks of a service of fifty-seven years, in his letter of 
resignation, he understates the length by a year, if one 
reckons to the time of his resignation, and by a college 
term, if one counts only actual service. 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 71 

The terms of service which most closely approach 
this record are those of Professor William Seymour 
Tyler of Amherst, Professor Packard of Bowdoin Col- 
lege, and Professor Asahel C. Kendrick of Rochester 
University. Professor Tyler, who died November 19, 
1897, at the age of eighty-seven, began teaching Greek 
in 1836, and was made Professor Emeritus in 1893 — a 
record of fifty-seven years. Professor Packard of 
Bowdoin became professor of Latin and Greek in 
1824, and continued to teach until his death, sixty years 
later; but in 1864 he became professor of natural and 
revealed religion, giving over his language work alto- 
gether to another instructor. Doctor Kendrick's career 
began in 183 1, and his name was carried in the cata- 
logues of Rochester University until his death in 1895 ; 
but for several years, from 1888 in fact, his name was 
starred as "not giving instruction," so that his length 
of service (in two universities) was fifty-seven years. 
The closest parallel, then, is that between Doctor North 
and Doctor Packard. But all of these four careers run so 
close together in duration, that they may be regarded 
as alike in length. Doctor North was a warm friend and 
occasional correspondent of these contemporaries. If 
any name of veteran " Greekist " which ought to 
have been included in this record has been omitted, it 
is an oversight of ignorance. Professor North's memo- 
randum of 1890 was supplemented in 1901, about the 
time of his resignation, by the following tribute to the 
contemporary Greek professors who furnished the text- 
books of which he had made chief use in his long 
career : 

When I began my work as a teacher of Greek fifty-seven 
years ago, there were ten Greek professors who were a living 
inspiration for what is best in classical scholarship j and their 
memory is a living inspiration now that they have gone to the 



72 OLD GREEK 

honored rest that awaits all competent and faithful teachers. 
Professor Packard was then the Greek professor in Bowdoin 
College, and we used his edition of Xenophon's Memora- 
biha. Later we used the edition of Professor Robbins of 
Middlebury College. We also read the Agamemnon of 
^schylus, with notes good, bad, and indifferent, by Professor 
C. C. Felton of Harvard College. We read the Antigone of 
Sophocles with notes, few and trustworthy, by Doctor Wool- 
sey of Yale College, and the IHad of Homer with no end 
of notes by Charles Anthon of Columbia College, and with 
Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, edited by Professor Drisler of 
Columbia College. We read Homer's Odyssey with notes 
by Professor Owen of the City College of New York. We also 
read the CEdipus Tyrannus with notes by Howard Crosby, 
and Plato's Laws with notes by Doctor Tayler Lewis of Union 
College, whose extreme deafness compelled each junior to 
recite with chalk, on the blackboard ; and Doctor Asahel Clark 
Kendrick, our own graduate, was a personal friend, whose 
friendship was a wealth of good inspiration. These ten Greek 
professors have all finished their teaching, yet are still living in 
the lives of thousands to whom their teaching is a sacred 
inheritance. 

In 1 90 1 Professor North tendered his resignation in 
the following brief letter : 

Clinton, November 16, 1901. 
President M. Woolsey Stryker, D.D. 

My dear Sir : I hereby resign the professorship of Greek in 
Hamilton College, and I ask that this resignation may take 
effect at the close of the current term, when I shall have com- 
pleted fifty-seven years in the service of the college, under five 
successive presidents. Rejoicing in all that brings joy to the 
college, and with hearty good wishes for all its officers, alumni, 

and students, I remain, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Edward North. 

At the meeting of the trustees at which this letter was 
read, and the resignation accepted, Hon. Theodore M. 




DEPARTMENT OF 

Greek Language and Literature, 

HAMILTON COLLEGE, 

Clinton, Oneida County, N. Y, 







PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 73 

Pomeroy was chosen to write to Doctor North a letter 
expressive of the board's appreciation of his services, to 
be spread upon the official minutes. The letter is a ten- 
der and touching record of the feeling of the members 
of the board of trustees for the professor " whose heart 
has never failed, whose faith has never faltered." 

Auburn, N.Y., November 21, 1901. 

Professor Edward North, LL.D., L.H.D., 

Hamilton College. 

My dear Professor : At a meeting of the board of trustees 
of Hamilton College, held on the 19th inst,, President Stryker 
presented your resignation of the chair of Professor of the 
Greek Language and Literature, to take effect with the close 
of the present college term, and completing a continuous ser- 
vice as such Professor of fifty-seven years. 

It was with a sorrow chastened with gratitude to a kind 
Providence who has given to our loved college such an unex- 
ampled term of illustrious service, that the board felt com- 
pelled to accept such resignation, coupled with your appoint- 
ment as Emeritus Professor. 

Beyond the official action which will be officially communi- 
cated to you by the secretary, I was requested in the name of 
the board, to present to you and to have placed upon the min- 
utes of the meeting, an expression of their most loving appre- 
ciation of your Hfe work, and of their boundless gratitude to 
you for the consecration of such a life to Hamilton College. 

Most of the board are Hamilton alumni, and during your 
long term of service, have received from you the best culture 
possible to them, in the highest standard of classical literature, 
the old Greek, which you have loved and taught so well, and 
they most keenly feel what this sundering of your active work 
in the classical course of the college means. All alike, how- 
ever, recognize that the honored national distinction which 
you have won and long borne as a scholar in the highest 
department of classical learning, has contributed most largely 
to the good reputation which Hamilton has maintained among 



74 OLD GREEK 

her sister colleges. The pride of the undergraduates in your 
acknowledged leadership in your department, and the affection 
won from them by the magnetism of your high character, and 
your kind consideration for them, have been an ever present 
inspiration to the best scholarship and the highest manhood. 
No word less than love can designate the regard held toward 
you by two generations of graduates, comprising practically the 
whole living body of our alumni. 

It is earnestly desired by the trustees, that continuing your 
union with us as a member of this board, you will accept the 
chair of Emeritus Professor, and that the loving tie that binds 
us all, trustees, faculty, graduates and undergraduates, to 
you, and which has so long bound you to our college, shall not 
be dissolved until the evening of your Hfe shall have melted 
into the morning of that better and endless day, to enter into 
which is the highest human aspiration. 

All departments of the college know, and you must feel, 
how heavily the college has leaned upon you during many 
years, and especially when the chair of the President has been 
vacant and the duties of that office have been laid upon you. 
When the trustees have groaned over an empty treasury, 
and an apparent apathy of the alumni and of the public has 
rested like a cloud upon College Hill, with its depressing 
influence upon the faculty and undergraduates, your heart 
has never failed, your faith has never faltered, and with 
cheerful courage born of a high conviction of duty, you have 
looked and led toward that brighter future which is to-day. 
Present happy conditions are largely the creation of that cour- 
ageous leadership. A president of your own nomination has 
assumed and is fiUing the full measure of that high office. 
Public attention was never so generously directed to the 
college. Enthusiasm has been kindled in the hearts of' the 
alumni as never before, and no cloud obscures the sunshine 
upon the lovely home of the largest and best body of under- 
graduates the college has ever known. 

As we enter upon the new century in perfect security of the 
- present and in an ardent faith in a broader and higher life for 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 75 

our college in the future, a generous gratitude abides for you, 
and for all who have labored with you to make present condi- 
tions possible and future probabilities so bright and cheering. 
Others with hands sufficiently strong and hearts sufficiently 
warm and generous, will bear all burdens now, and they wel- 
come you to your well-earned rest. 

The memory of the past will furnish a pleasing retrospect ; 
you may enjoy the present in perfect serenity; and "at the 
evening time there shall be light," from the golden sunset of a 
perfectly rounded Christian life. 
In behalf of the board of trustees, 

Yours most truly and affectionately, 

Theodore M. Pomeroy, 

Committee, 

In the June follow^ing his resignation Doctor North's 
failing strength was further impaired by an illness from 
which he never recovered, and which confined him to 
his house and his bedroom for fourteen months, until 
his death on the morning of September 13, 1903. 

That long and weary waiting for the time to "go 
home " was filled with daily evidences of the patience, 
the gentleness, and the serenity of soul, which never 
deserted him. It was crowded also with proofs of the 
tender love and solicitude of his friends and neighbors. 
From among the many tributes elicited by Doctor 
North's death, there are preserved here the minute of 
the faculty, and the memorial of the board of trustees. 

Minute of the Faculty 

The faculty enters upon its records this minute of respect 
to Professor Edward North, who was for fifty-seven years an 
active member of this body, who was for a time its presiding 
officer, and for many years its senior member. 

We cherish the memory of one whose devotion to the col- 
lege has been an inspiration to the generations of instructors 



76 OLD GREEK 

and students with whom and for whom he labored. To many 
members of the faculty he had been an honored preceptor; 
to all he was a colleague whose ripe judgment rendered him a 
trusted counselor and whose courteous regard for all his asso- 
ciates made companionship with him a pleasure. In his career 
we recognize the working out of a steadfast purpose to upbuild the 
college by a wise and large use of the teacher's office. We honor 
his life as a noble example of scholarship and culture unselfishly 
devoted to the highest ends, an example which has dignified the 
calling to which he gave himself, and the college which he served. 

Memorial of the Board of Trustees 

To render in words a fitting tribute to the memory of our 
late associate. Professor Edward North, would require the inim- 
itable command of language which he himself so preeminently 
possessed, and which so charmed all who listened to him or read 
his written words. The man and his language were most fittingly 
united — each unique and sui generis. Into each there seemed 
to run the smooth and musical rhythm of the old Greek poetry 
which he loved and knew so well. His training and inclina- 
tion led him naturally and easily into the line of hfe which he 
chose to lead, and which he followed so faithfully, unobtrusively, 
and successfully for over threescore years. His devotion to the 
college, his kindly ways and fatherly attention to its students, 
can never be forgotten by those who had the benefit of his 
instruction. All his energies were enlisted in his work with no 
seeming ambition beyond success in that work. Fortunate 
indeed has it been for Hamilton College that such a life has 
grown into it and left its lasting impress. Its nature and 
example drew towards it the affection of faculty and students, 
giving lasting tone and character to the college and its work. 
Nothing tending to the welfare of the college, its students or 
its alumni, escaped the attention of Doctor North. He gave 
particular attention to matters of detail ; seemed intuitively to 
grasp the character and needs of each individual student, and 
to remember and keep track of him throughout his after life. 
As a member of this board this attention to details of college 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 77 

needs and management was particularly manifest and useful. 
Nothing escaped his notice. All was done in quiet, unassum- 
ing, and unobtrusive ways, productive of desired results, with- 
out antagonism. Yet when he thought there was need, he 
could take bold stand and be determined, pronounced, and 
aggressive, but never offensive. 

Blest was the college to have for so many years the love and 
labor of such a man — one that so "loved his fellow-men." 
He lived to the full accomplishment of his chosen work, and 
in the home he loved so well he passed in quiet the close of a 
long, well-rounded Hfe, and in the passing his friends could hope- 
fully say 

Softly, oh ! softly, the years have swept by thee, 

Touching thee lightly with tenderest care : 
Sorrows and care did they often bring nigh thee, 
Yet they have left thee but beauty to wear, 
Growing old gracefully, 
Gracefully fair. 

How well can we apply to him the concluding words of 
Tacitus in his remarkable memorial to his friend Agricola : 

"If in another world there is a pious mansion for the 
blessed : if, as the wisest men have thought, the soul is not ex- 
tinguished with the body : may you enjoy a state of eternal 
felicity ! From that station exalt our minds from fond regrets 
and unavaiHng griefs to the contemplation of your virtues. 
These we must not lament ; it were impiety to sully them with 
a tear. To cherish their memory, to embalm them with our 
praises, and, if our frail condition will permit to emulate your 
bright example, will be the truest mark of our respect, the best 
tribute your family can offer. The soul is formed of finer 
elements, and its inward form is not to be expressed by the 
hand of an artist with unconscious matter ; our manners and 
our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All 
that gained our love and raised our admiration still subsists, 
and will ever subsist preserved in the minds of men, the register 
of ages, and the records of fame." 

George M. Diven. 
Theodore M. Pomeroy. 



y8 OLD GREEK 

Doctor North's life passed out amid the quiet scenes 
and the green trees amidst which it had been so beauti- 
fully and serenely Hved. He was borne by neighbors and 
friends to the college cemetery he so dearly loved, and 
to the development of which he had devoted so much 
tender care. Thus was fulfilled the wish expressed in 
one of his earlier sonnets : 

I Would be Buried 

Not where a marble wilderness 
Of spires that spurn the ivy trees, 
And seem with weary might to press 

The under-sleeping dead ; 
Nor where the gay and idle meet 
And mock the grief of those whose feet 
Obedient move to memories sweet, 

Would I be buried. 

But where the walls are hushed and green, 
Where the turfed graves have trees between. 
And song birds choose the hallowed scene 

To build their nests and wed : 
Where mourners come at twilight time, 
To wet with tears the chiseled rhyme. 
And spirits stoop from the upper clime, 

I would be buried. 

This epitome of Doctor North's life may appropriately 
close with his own impressive summary of the life worth 
living, written on his eightieth birthday : 

At eighty years, what is life's dearest prize ? 

Not landscapes' shifting wealth of light and gloom. 

Not trees that whisper hints of Paradise, 

Not tender flowers that breathe delight's perfume, 

Not music's medicine for slander's gall, 

Not Attic lore with ageless wisdom fraught. 



PROFESSOR IN COLLEGE 79 

Not travel's panoramic festival, 

Not letters sweet from far-off homesteads brought, 

Not history's crowded scenes of war and gore, 

Not drama's resurrected life and show ; 

But hopes to meet dear, lost ones gone before, 

With faith that Christ's own arm will strength bestow 

When earthly scenes fade from the mortal view 

And hopes of sinless, endless joys come true. 

Among Doctor North's papers was found an epitaph 
"written for myself," which carries a charming play 
upon words and a sublime thought in a single 
couplet : 

Who spent his last days in translating dead lore, 
Death now has translated where death reigns no more. 



CHAPTER IV 

SOJOURN IN GREECE 

Secretary to Minister Francis in Athens — Acting Consul 
AT PiRiEus — A Lay Sermon — Personal Experiences in 
Athens — The Modern Greek — Impressions of the Greek 
People — King George and his New Year's Ball — The 
Wingless Victory. 

In 1 871, Hon. John M. Francis of Troy, New York, 
was appointed by President Grant, United States 
Minister to Greece, and he invited Professor North to 
accompany him, as his secretary of legation. The 
invitation was tendered as a recognition of Doctor 
North's Greek scholarship, and in the belief that his 
knowledge of the ancient language and literature would 
prove of practical service in the transaction of the busi- 
ness of the legation in the modern vernacular. With 
some misgiving, and after much persuasion. Doctor 
North accepted the invitation. It involved the single 
prolonged absence from the college which occurred in 
Doctor North's career; and it appears from his cor- 
respondence that he was homesick for " Halfwayup " 
and the college every minute of his sojourn abroad. 
But it was a delightful and fruitful episode in his life, 
broadening his outlook, bringing him into personal 
touch with the themes and scenes of his life studies, 
leading to many delightful friendships, and creating 
new inspiration for the study and teaching of Greek. 
Some of his personal impressions of modern Greece 
were embodied in his later lectures on "The New 

80 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 8 1 

Hellas," "Modern Greek Journalism," and "King 
George and his New Year's Ball." 

Writing home, he described his feelings on the soft 
and beautiful morning in November when he arose at 
six o'clock to see Piraeus in sight from the steamer's 
deck. " Thrills of joy went through my heart at the 
sight of the dear mountains that overlook the city of 
Minerva." 

There followed eight months of busy activity, fre- 
quently interspersed by expeditions to points of historic 
interest. Once he wrote home : 

We are using four languages at the legation, Greek, French, 
German, English, and in a few weeks shall be ready to take a 
contract for completing the tower of Babel. 

An unanticipated experience was a service of several 
months as acting consul for the United States at Piraeus, 
on appointment of Minister Francis. On December 23, 
1871, he wrote home : 

I have spent the better part of this week in the service of 
the United States, taking an inventory of property belonging 
to the consulate at Piraeus, learning the ropes, and preparing 
dispatches for Washington. It is a new life, and may bring 
good to me, if not to the government. The consular office is 
at Piraeus, five miles from Athens, by the only railroad that 
Greece can boast. I shall be obliged to go often to the office, 
but my home will be at the American legation. Another kind 
of work is thrust upon me. I have already officiated at a 
Thanksgiving service and at a funeral. Next Monday I am 
to preach a Christmas sermon. I cannot explain how all this 
comes to pass. For there are three ordained missionaries here, 
and it would seem as if I might be spared to look after the 
consulate and the Greek antiquities. I have still good health 
to be thankful for, and the weather is again soft and beautiful. 

The Christmas sermon, or " homily," here alluded to 
was the only sermon Doctor North ever wrote, and as 



82 OLD GREEK 

it was written and spoken in Athens, and found its 
theme in one of the sublimest conceptions of Greek 
tragedy, it seems worth while to reproduce it here. It 
was printed in full, in the modern Greek, by the " Daily 
Amyna" of Athens, which editorially described it as 
" the homily of the reverence-worthy and Greek-loving 
Professor North." 

A Christmas Sermon 

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. — 
Matthew ii : lo. 

About five hundred years before that happy birthday which 
calls us together this morning, a notable Greek tragedy was 
brought out in the new theater of Bacchus, lying upon the 
sharp southeastern slope of the Acropolis, in the presence 
of thirty thousand spectators. That tragedy exhibited the 
hunlan race delivered from ignorance, poverty, and wretched- 
ness by the gift of fire. The hero of the tragedy was the fire- 
bringer and philanthropist who snatched from the blazing 
chariot of the sun, as it coursed down the heaven, a spark 
of that most serviceable and comforting element, which until 
that time the gods alone had controlled. When Zeus, the 
monarch of Olympus, sees this theft of fire from heaven, he 
is seized with ungovernable rage. At his command appears 
Vulcan with his two giant servants — Strength and Force. 
The fire-bringer is immediately seized, bound in chains, and 
borne to the icy and desolate crags of Caucasus, his limbs 
are fettered to the high, steep rocks ; he is subjected to cruel 
tortures and the gibes of angry insolence; a fierce eagle is 
sent to prey upon the vitals of the suffering man ; his body, 
covered with wounds, bends under the lightning and storms. 
At last he is left, wearied and alone, in the pathless and voice- 
less desert, that he may be subdued by his terrible sufferings. 
But the courageous spirit of the fire-bringer and philanthropist 
is unbroken by all this. 

There is such a moral sublimity in this delineation of per- 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 83 

severance in doing good to others that we may not withhold 
our highest admiration. But our wonder is increased when 
we perceive the ethical significance of the tragedy. By ^schy- 
lus the purloiner of the fire is called " Prometheus," or " the 
fore-thinker." The stolen fire, releasing man from ignorance 
and saving him from the fall into utter degradation, is a type 
of that keen, quick intellect which solves the enigmas of our 
mysterious being and reveals the secrets of nature. Symbolic- 
ally he represents that sharp-sighted, industrious frame of 
mind which reduces the elements to the service of man ; that 
profound science and Promethean forethought which prolongs 
and sweetens life, removing its annoyances ; that love for the 
beautiful in art which adorns our pathway leading down to 
the grave through anthems of sculpture and paintings, poetry 
and music. 

The fire of Prometheus was a priceless gift to man. It 
brought him an untried pleasure and the highest good. It 
gave the greatest possible development to all his physical and 
mental powers. It established the theater, fruitful of images 
of beauty so perfectly imitated that they might deceive the 
sight of man, bird, or beast. It cut out, as it were, living 
statues from the quarries of Pentele. It built temples, after- 
wards overthrown by the barbarians, and now moss-covered 
ruins, in part the model, in part the despair, of the architect 
to-day. It created the dramatic spectacles which made 
Athens the center of the civilized world, and poured into 
her treasuries rivers of gold from surrounding nations. 

Yet there was still a want unsatisfied. Life was length- 
ened, beautified, adorned with glorious deeds ; but "it is not 
all of life to live." Death, unavoidable, remained. Death 
must come in at last. And alas ! " it is not all of death to 
die." The soul knew its own sinfulness. And when wealth 
and art had accomplished all they could for pleasure, the 
soul was still tormented and harassed by a fearful expecta- 
tion of a dread something after death ; the fire of Prometheus 
could never purify the soul stained with guilt and sin. Nor 
did it perceive a single ray of consolation lighting up the 



84 OLD GREEK 

transmigration of the soul to that mysterious realm, where 
each must dwell in the silent halls of the dead. It laid no 
firm foundation for that cheering hope which inspired Paul 
when he exulted, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, 
where is thy victory ? " 

You all have seen those monumental stones recently dis- 
closed in the Ceramicus. There are painful separations 
engraved upon them ; weeping Rachels, who will not be com- 
forted ; faces marked with bitter and inconsolable grief; 
hands clasped in the long, sad farewell ; figures of despair 
upon the banks of the dread river Acheron. 

We look upon a different picture, and we recognize the 
surpassing hope in Christ when we enter those old cata- 
combs of Rome, where, it is said, the passages have been 
excavated for many miles, and hundreds of Christian burial- 
places have been discovered. Careful investigation discovers 
there the most moderate and self-contained exhibitions of 
grief upon the tombs of the martyrs, who, in life, were hunted 
down like wild beasts, and secretly inhumed in those dark 
cr)rpts. If grief is expressed at all, the expression manifests, 
in the midst of emotion, submission to the will of God. 
Those Roman catacombs were known to early Christians 
as " cemeteries," sleeping-rooms. When the body was laid 
away, it was said that it was placed there " that it may be 
raised again, when the earth and the sea shall give up their 
dead." Upon the tomb of a dead saint was written, " He 
sleeps in Christ, that he may rise from the dead when the 
last trump shall sound." 

Without Christ, the clouds of death have no silver lining. 
The wise men of the East had all the knowledge, all the 
mental power that the forethought of ^schylus could pro- 
vide, and yet they were praying and looking and hoping for 
something better. They knew the prophecies, and " when 
they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." 
In the coming of Christ was announced to them a hope of 
deliverance from the stain, the servitude, and the works of 
sin. The death and resurrection of Christ secured these 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 85 

through His own victory over the great enemy. No longer 
need they tremble through fear of weakness, age, and death. 
The birth of Christ was announced by a star, the constant 
emblem of all that is holiest, purest, and nearest to heaven. 
That star was a "star in the East," a rising star, to signify 
the dawn of a new life in the soul, a nev/ splendor in the his- 
tory of the world, when men should be judged according to 
the highest measure of their real worth. Why do we so sel- 
dom describe our Saviour as possessed of a fluent tongue and 
a brilliant intellect? We know that His was a surpassing 
eloquence, emptying entire districts, and drawing the popu- 
lace after Him into the deserts. We know that His bitter 
scorn withered whatever it fell upon. We know that mere 
words can no more set forth the intellectual greatness of 
Christ than figures can reveal to us the outposts of eternity. 
Why do we not inquire further about Him, as about the Won- 
derful Counselor? Simply because His infinite goodness 
and holiness first seize upon our thoughts, and compel us to 
love and worship. As an ethical example, the life of Christ 
teaches us with a certain, swift power, not easily to be resisted. 
Christian heartwork is better than Promethean headwork. 
The labor of the intellect emits a chill, wintry light like that 
of the moon upon a field of snow ; it points out the path of 
duty, but has little power to allure any to walk therein. 
Heartwork brings not only light, but warmth as well; it 
quickens the growth of the flowers and perfects the ripe 
fruits of a holy life. Headwork knows how to gild the 
apples of Sodom with gaudy tints ; it can cheat the soul with 
bright visions of success so long as life lights the lamp for 
pleasure. But when the night of adversity comes, when the 
false friends of summer have vanished, then all the allies of 
the unhallowed philosophy of Prometheus desert their post 
and leave the defenseless soul an easy prey to its enemies. 
Many illustrious men have run the course of intellectual 
greatness, proving that all such glory is nothing but a jest 
and a vapor compared with the cloudless light of the soul 
resting upon Christ. 



S6 OLD GREEK 

Many of us have come together to-day under a foreign sky, 
surrounded by circumstances wholly different from the sights 
and sounds of Christmas time in England or America. 
Memory is very busy to-day recalling the friends and the 
joys of other days and other climes. The Parthenon is no 
less beautiful to-day, if fancy can adorn it with the frieze of 
Phidias amid the sharp blasts of a northern winter. Christ 
becomes dearer to us when we remember that He shelters all, 
that for all the children of Adam He is a Saviour. 

In the midst of a people dear to us for the splendor of its 

history, of a people " whose land from plain to mountain top 

was the home of freedom and the grave of glory," we declare 

the lofty hymns which the bells of Christmas time bring back 

to us: 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 

For those that here we see no more ; 

Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out false pride in place and blood, 

The civic slander and the spite ; 

Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land. 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

On Christmas Eve, 1842, a noble and zealous missionary 
(Doctor Hill) chanced to be going from Syros to Athens. The 
steamer was to reach the Piraeus that same night. But the 
vessel was obliged to go into quarantine with all on board. 
That he might escape the quarantine the missionary asked 
permission to attach his little boat to the stern of the steamer. 
He took with him a pair of oars, placed all his baggage in the 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 8/ 

boat, and, favored by a calm sea and a clear sky, his heart 
warmed with happy thoughts of wife and little ones, he 
watched the pure stars through all that long cold night, 
following the track of the tainted vessel. At dawn the 
Piraeus was in sight. Casting off the rope by which his 
little boat was attached to the steamer, and plying his oars 
with a will, he reached the shore, and the brave missionary, 
" rejoicing with exceeding great joy," reached his home in 
Athens on Christmas Day. Forever blessed be that day 
which leads the traveler to his home, which bids the yule 
log sing its cheerful song, which stops awhile the noise of 
labor, and opens the heart to deeds of charity; which 
quickens the blood in the veins of age, garrulous of younger 
days ; which makes the eyes of expectant children dance for 
joy ; which recalls the touch of vanished hands and the music 
of silenced voices ; which unites in one the men of every 
clime and race and tongue in the strong Christian bond of 
a good hope and exceeding great joy. 

Here is an extract from one of his letters home which 
tells a little of his personal experience : 

I find that a Greek winter is likely to have all the vices 
with few of the virtues of a winter in central New York. 
In November the weather was warm and most delightful. 
Now it is fickle and trying. The winds come down like 
roaring wolves from the mother hills, chilling and killing 
any Annabel Lee that may chance to be in their path. 
Greek houses are not built for comfort. It is astonishing 
how much perverted ingenuity a Greek will display in making 
a stove. It is most maliciously contrived to monopolize 
your attention and care, which is rewarded with ^e smallest 
amount of heat and comfort. If Talleyrand's statement is 
true that language was invented to conceal thought, it is 
equally true that a Greek stove was invented to conceal 
caloric. I am now sitting by an ambitious parlor stove, so 
walled about with massive brickwork that it looks like a 
mausoleum of dead and buried comfort. Yet the fire in it 



88 OLD GREEK 

is fragrant with most classic suggestion. It is made of 
crooked olive roots and gnarled olive billets that are — if 
we are to believe the guidebooks — old enough to have 
been seen by Plato and Paul. Shortsighted Socrates on 
his way to the Academy, and preoccupied with a new net- 
work of metaphysical questions, may have " stubbed his 
toe " over that humpbacked olive root that now sings to 
me so serenely in that fireplace that looks like the mouth 
of the great brick oven in which my blessed mother baked 
her Connecticut election cake about the time when these 
Greeks threw off the yoke of Turkish despotism. Wood is 
very scarce and dear ; though green. Any day one may see 
donkeys in the streets of Athens laden with bundles of thyme 
and other shrubs that are dug up on the barren hillsides and 
sold for fuel in the market. If an old olive tree dies, every 
fragment of its roots is carefully dug up and sold for fuel. 

Much of Doctor North's time, while in Athens, w^as em- 
ployed in translating the diplomatic correspondence of 
the legation ; and in this work his thorough acquaint- 
ance with the French language stood him in good 
stead. But he found it necessary also to famiharize 
himself with the modern Greek pronunciation and idiom. 
This extract from his journal describes one of his 
experiences : 

Athens, December 6, i8yi. — I went by previous appoint- 
ment to the house of Mr. Constantine, where I met Rev. 
Dionysus Latos, a distinguished Greek preacher, aged about 
forty-five, educated partly in Germany. He has spent six 
months in England, and speaks English lamely. In his own 
tongue he is eloquent. We talked about the modern pronun- 
ciation of Greek. He wished me to read a passage from 
Homer after the Erasmian style. I scanned the first paragraph 
in the Iliad as well as I knew how. He declared with energy 
that Homer never recited in that way, and gave the same lines 
with the modern pronunciation. I am bound to confess that 
his scanning was far more musical than mine. Yet he agreed 




Edward North in the 50": 



fi 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 89 

with me that the modern Greeks had fallen from their ancient 
grace in losing the force of the aspirate, and in losing the dis- 
tinction between o and w. He declared that the Erasmian 
method could not be right, and Greek scholars ought to unite 
on the modem pronunciation, as a convenient and practical 
point for harmony. 

After his return to the United States, Doctor North, 
in one of his lectures, wrote again upon this subject: 

If an American is to use his Greek as a medium of oral 
intercourse with modern Athenians, he has no alternative 
but to accept their pronunciation, and make the best of it. 
You may ask them where is the good of retaining the breath- 
ings, as they are retained, when they are never recognized in 
speaking; you may ask them where is the good of two ^'s, 
omicron and omega, when they are sounded precisely alike; 
you may ask them where is the good of half a dozen forms for 
expressing the sound of ^ra; you may ask where was the 
authority for rewriting Homer's Iliad, in order to bring it into 
subjection to the current pronunciation; you may ask other 
questions that seem to you to be equally pertinent. Your ques- 
tions will be laughed at by the modern Athenians. They have 
possession of the spoken language of Demosthenes by the right 
of inheritance, and possession is nine points of the norma lo- 
quendij as well as the law of real estate. * * * Language is a 
growth. A language is not built like a locomotive; nor can 
its mysteries be solved like a problem in mathematics. 

During this brief sojourn in Athens, Doctor North 
cemented many friendships which brought him much 
pleasure in later years. One of these was with Doctor 
Henry Schliemann, the German archeologist. The 
following extracts from his journal contain some inter- 
esting reminiscences of this famous and remarkable 
man : 

Athens, December 18, 1871. — The day was pinchingly cold. 
The mountains about Athens — Hymettus, Parnes, and Penteli- 



90 OLD GREEK 

cus — are still white with snow. In the p.m. I called upon Henry 
Schliemann, a German archeologist, who for the love of Greek 
and Greek lore makes his home in Athens. His house is as 
beautiful as any in the city, and only lacks a cosy warming to 
make it complete. Mr. Schhemann was many years a mer- 
chant in St. Petersburg and then mastered the Greek language 
without a teacher. He removed to the United States; was 
naturalized in New York, and his framed certificate of American 
citizenship decorates the wall of his study. His property is 
invested in American bonds and stocks, and his love for the 
land of his adoption is only equaled by his affection for Greece 
and his young Greek wife, to whom he introduced me, as one 
who could talk in Greek and French. 

Henry Schliemann lately returned from ancient Troy, where 
he made most fruitful excavations with the consent of the 
Sultan of Turkey. He brought home a large number of antique 
vases and inscriptions and reliques, that gave him material for 
learned speculations that will be of the highest value and in- 
terest. He has already published a valuable work on the antiq- 
uities of Corfu, Ithaca, and the Peloponnesus. 

Athens^ January 75, i8'/2. — Dined with Henry Schliemann, 
and spent the evening with him, reading the "Agamemnon " of 
^schylus. He has a well-selected library of Greek authors, all 
richly bound, and he studies them with genuine enthusiasm. 
He says he reads Homer every night in his bed. His wife is 
heartily with him in love for Homer. At the dinner table, she 
repeated the Greek of Ulysses's address to Nausicaa in the 
Odyssey, and Mr. Schliemann translated the passage into Eng- 
lish with the greatest enthusiasm. Such impassioned, one- 
minded devotion to Homer on the part of man and wife is very 
beautiful. 

In one of his later lectures Doctor North paid this 
fine tribute to Doctor Schliemann and his v^rife : 

Among men of foreign birth, no one has done more for the 
honor and the spread of our mother tongue than Doctor Henry 
Schliemann. His name recalls many hospitable courtesies and 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 91 

memorable winter evenings most charmingly spent with him 
over the pages of Homer and ^schylus, and Sophocles and 
Herodotus and Theocritus. A wonderful archeologist is this 
Doctor Henry SchHemann. His costly home at Athens, between 
the University and the king's palace, is a crowded repository 
of precious relics from Troy and Mycenae that make it, to the 
scholars of all lands and languages, a center of most absorbing 
interest. 

His busy Hfe, as he tells it to his friends, reads like a chapter 
from the " Arabian Nights." Bom in Germany, without even a 
pewter spoon in his mouth; trained by travel and Russian 
experience to large business ventures ; naturalized in America, 
and wresting from California traders the magic art of transmut- 
ing enterprise into gold ; polished and petted in Paris ; lionized 
by the haughtiest lions of London ; married and domesticated 
in Athens, he has made his career equally splendid as a money- 
getter, as a restless traveler, and as an antiquarian explorer, 
always ready, like another Caesar, to record by night whatever 
the day discovers, as a master of twenty languages, conquered 
during half-hours snatched from business or from sleep, and 
enthroning English, pure and undefiled, as the queen of modern 
tongues. 

All that money can do for Homer and archeology is sure 
to be done by Doctor Schliemann. But millions of money would 
have left him only half successful, without that Teutonic enthu- 
siasm, that Russian endurance, that American grit and courage, 
that Scottish passion for the higher learning, that English self- 
poise, that French suaveness and courtesy, that Greek quick- 
ness and love of glory, which are strikingly blended in his 
cosmopolitan character. 

Doctor SchHemann loves the language of Shakespeare, and 
is proud of his American citizenship. His portrait of Lincoln 
hangs beside that of Homer. His large investments are made 
in American securities. Lord Macaulay's illogical croaking 
would never disturb Doctor Schliemann's faith ia our republic's 
brilliant future. If his life is spared, he will one day revisit the 
land of his adoption. 



92 OLD GREEK 

The newspapers print most extravagant yams about Doctor 
Schliemann's Greek wife. It is true that he followed a custom 
often observed by the Greeks, and selected his Maid of Athens 
by a photograph. 

But, before he took the next step, he made himself sure that 
her winning face was the index to a beautiful soul. Her in- 
tellectual culture began with her marriage, and each year she 
conquers a new language as a new bond of union to her poly- 
lingual husband. She shared with him all hardships and 
dangers among treacherous Turks at Hissarlik. They are very 
domestic. They love each other to the verge of idolatry. 
They name their children after the heroes and heroines of the 
Iliad. They believe in Homer as devoutly as any Mussulman be- 
lieves in the Koran, or any Chinaman in Confucius. To them 
Agamemnon and Priam are historical verities, as much so 
as Abraham and Moses are to you and me. When one of their 
guests, at a quiet dinner party, referred to Homer's faultless 
picture of wedded happiness, in a home where husband and 
wife are one-minded and one-hearted, and they themselves 
best know how good it is, Mrs. Schliemann, at the head of the 
table, repeated the original hexameters with a tender cadence 
that brought tears of delight to more eyes than two. 

As revealing in some degree the impressions made 
upon this lifelong student of classic Greece and its 
literature, by his brief sojourn in the modern Athens, 
the folloviring extracts are taken from Doctor North's lec- 
ture, entitled " King George and his New Year's Ball " 
— a lecture which he read many times before college 
classes after his return. Altogether characteristic is 
this account of the professor's introduction to the King 
of Greece : 

Then looking behind the American minister, with just a sus- 
picion of fun in his bright eyes and kindly dimples, the King 
asked if that was the Greek professor. The Greek professor 
was not there to deny his identity, what there was of it, or to 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 93 

repudiate his Greek, such as it was. He thanked His Majesty 
for the honor of an introduction. His Majesty then asked if 
this was the Greek professor's first visit to Athens. Here was 
a splendid opening for a few brilliant remarks. The Greek 
professor might have replied that many years before, in fact 
before His Majesty had cut his eyeteeth or developed the 
witchery of dainty dimples, he had made several inexpensive 
aerial trips to the birthplace of dactyls and spondees, and that 
he had dreamed many a beautiful dream in the shadows of the 
Parthenon, the Museum, and the matchless Olympieum. That 
reply is suppressed. It was too vague, ambitious, and indirect 
for a Greek professor, conversing for the first time and the last 
time with the King of the Greeks. 

The King next asked if there was any marked difference 
between the ancient and the modern Greek. The Greek pro- 
fessor was now at home. He had been asked that same co- 
nundrum fifty times, on either side of the Atlantic. In fact he 
had a dry old lecture in America that would have made it 
entirely needless for King George to ask that question. But 
time was on the wing. His Majesty graciously accepted an off- 
hand reply as all sufficient for a New Year's ball, and passed 
on to talk of something else with the charge from Sweden. * * * 

While returning from the palace we wondered among our- 
selves how it came to pass that a New Year's invitation from 
the King of the Greeks, himself a son of the King of Denmark, 
brother-in-law to the Prince of Wales and the Crown Prince of 
Russia, should have been sent out in the language of the de- 
throned and exiled Bourbons of France. Our wonder was still 
greater when we passed the Arsakion, a large female college, 
richly endowed by Greek munificence, where six hundred 
Greek girls are preparing for the high position of wives and 
mothers to a new race of regenerated Greeks, who glory as 
much in their language as in their descent from the comrades 
of Leonidas and Themistocles. 

This wonder was in no degree lessened by our distant view 
of the AcropoHs, that heart of Athens, as Athens is the heart of 
Greece, whose glory haunts the Athenian wherever he goes, like 



94 OLD GREEK 

a sleepless omnipresence, and bids him never to surrender his 
faith that the star of empire will one day return and stand over 
the Wingless Victory ; that the destiny of Hellenism is to Hel- 
lenize that vast territory, inhabited by milHons of Greeks, still 
in thraldom to an alien and detested tyranny. 

Our wonder suddenly grew to the dimensions of an amaze- 
ment, when we passed the grand National University, with its 
colossal statue of the poet Rhigas of Pherae before it making 
a white fissure in the darkness, a free university still more 
richly endowed than the Arsakion, where twelve hundred stu- 
dents from all parts of Greece are aided by fifty professors 
and a hundred thousand books, in preparing to construct the 
Corinthian columns of a new Greek literature, even as the 
architects of Baron Sina, hard by the University, are chisel- 
ing from Pentelic marble a new temple to Wingless Victory. 

If a New Year's invitation, couched in the glib phrases of 
Rousseau and Voltaire, could be sent down to the proud and 
passionate ^schylus, wouldn't he call it a barbarian indig- 
nity? Wouldn't he make Hades ring with the frenzied outcry 
of his own Cassandra? 

'Ototototoi irbiTOL 5a, 

" A-TToWov, " AiroXKov, 

'Ayvidr dirdWuv i/xSs. 

' AirdXea-as yhp od (idXis rb devTcpov, 

Woe upon woe, ah, welladay, 

Apollo, Apollo, 

Wayside God, destroyer mine, 

Thou hast ruined me now with ease the second time. 

Forty-five years ago, the naval battle of Navarino secured 
the independence of a portion of Greek territory. Having 
thrown oif the Turkish yoke the Greeks elected a president, and 
gallantly resolved to rebuild their national institutions, and prove 
to the world that, in their case, " Time's noblest offspring is the 
last." After the assassination of Capodistrias in 1831, they 
began the second chapter of their independent career, oddly 
enough, by importing a king from Bavaria, and a court dialect 
from France. King Otho was a gift-king from the three Pro- 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 95 

tecting Powers, as the crowned heads of England, France, and 
Russia graciously styled themselves. If it had been courteous 
to look this Bavarian gift-king in the mouth, the modern Greeks 
would have found not a French phrase there that was worth 
the copying. 

Yet from that day to this the capital of Greece has suffered 
the humiliation of French phrases and French fashions in all 
polite circles; French fabrics, French modes, and French 
modistes in Athenian shops ; French nurses and French 
tutors for Athenian children; French names for their streets 
and squares ; French plays, French op^ra bouffes, and French 
music in their theaters; French newspapers in their French 
cafes; French morals in poHtical and social life. 

When a college president confers college degrees in the 
language of Cicero, we regard it as a graceful recognition of 
the fact that Latin was used for centuries as the common 
dialect of scholars throughout Christendom; and that the 
Latin literature is to-day a potent instrument and inspiration 
of generous culture. We rejoice in our allegiance to the stately 
Latin. But how is it with the modern Greek? He would fly 
into a towering passion were you to tell him that by using the 
language of France he is playing second fiddle in a ballroom 
orchestra, whose music but feebly echoes, or profanely bur- 
lesques the immortal harmonies of Sophocles and Pindar. 

The French language has its uses. In the shops of Rue de 
Rivoli and Rue de la Paix, one of its uses seems to be to 
commend the doctrine of Hudibras, that 

The pleasure is as great 

In being cheated as to cheat. 

The French language is graceful, vivacious, idiomatic, and 
convenient, as the language of compliment, of diplomacy, of 
cuHnary science, of dressmaking and love-making, where the 
love, like the dressmaking, has to deal only with the surface 
of things, with outside conveniences and conventionahties. 

The language of Voltaire and Talleyrand, so often used as an 
ingenious contrivance for concealing ideas and emotions, is not 



96 OLD GREEK 

the language best fitted for schooling the Greek nation to the 
habit of cutting their garments according to their cloth; the 
habit of paying as they go, and of meeting each debt squarely 
at the rate of one hundred lepta for a drachma. What the 
Greeks need to learn is the agricultural, subsoil, mowing- 
machine acquaintance with that mother earth so devoutly 
worshiped by their ancestors. They used to be taught that 
thriving by the plow and the sweat of honest fruitful toil is 
better than shinning, kite flying, cornering, and precarious 
officeholding. 

When the oak consents to grow and thrive as a graft on the 
elm; when England, having paid her national debt, loans 
money to the Rothschilds ; when the robin lays her eggs 
in the oriole's last year's nest ; when " the hart worries 
the hound, and the screech owl outsings the nightingale," 
we may hope that Greece will regain her ancient strength and 
splendor, by using an alien language as much inferior to her 
own as Ohio sandstone is inferior to the granite of Scotland 
and Quincy. 

The more the Greek mixes French with his native language, 
the more will the sugar of his daily talk be sanded with hypoc- 
risy, the more pronounced will be his inborn fondness for 
embelHshing facts with the drapery of fancy, of garnishing his 
business with flattering and insincere compliments, and of con- 
cealing his real sentiments while appearing to harmonize with 
those of another. The more the Greek practices the courtly 
phrases of Versailles, the less likely will he be to feel and to 
say with Homer's Achilles, 

Who can think one thing, and another tell, 
My soul detests him as the gates of hell. 

The French language is not a good pioneer of that higher 
Christian civilization that would teach a mercurial, pleasure- 
loving people to welcome the sweat of productive industry ; to 
remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; and to blot out 
from their false Julian Calendar about fifty saints' hohdays now 
more sacred than the Sabbath ; to put their trust more in the 
Christ of the Bible, and less in the kissing of saintly pictures 



SOJOURN IN GREECE . 97 

and the prayers of an ignorant mercenary priest, who only 
prays for a price, always payable in advance. 

If the Greeks are as slow to learn in the future as they have 
been slow to learn in the past, they will need the discipline of 
a sterner, wiser schoolmaster than the French language, before 
they are practically convinced that solid mahogany is more 
respectable in the long run than highly varnished veneering ; 
that honestly to be is far better than daintily seeming to be ; 
that the truest happiness clings to the fireside; that a well- 
behaved daughter is entitled to at least one vote out of four 
votes in the choice of a husband to be loved and honored and 
obeyed, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. 

The structure of modern Greek verse differs widely from the 
ancient classic models. Our familiar hymn, " Nearer My God 
to Thee," as turned into modern Greek, and as sung by Greek 
Protestants, illustrates the docility and ductileness of the lan- 
guage in conforming to the exactions of rhyme and accentual 
meter. 

H\r](riov Sov, 0e^, 

II\r}crlov 2oO, 
*Av Kal vrpdvcjfJLaL 

Aid arravpov : 
JI\t]v 6^\€i eiad' a^rij 

*H irpJjTT] fiov evxij, 
HXtjctIov, c5 0e^, 

nXtjaiov Sou. 

This Greek hymn may be used to illustrate half a dozen 
characteristics of the modern Greek : 

1. It shows that the iambic feet are organized accentually 
and not according to quantity. This makes a distinction be- 
tween ancient and modern Greek verse, and shows how com- 
pletely the modern EngHsh system of rhythm has gained the 
victory even in the land of Homer. If Theocritus could hear 
one of the modern Greek rhapsodists, he would exclaim, Xrjyere 
KOL ippere, w ^dp^apoL ! 

2. This hymn also shows the loss of the dative, which uni- 
versity scholars are trying to recover ; Sict aravpov is used in 
place of the instrumental dative o-rav/xj. 



98 OLD GREEK 

3. It shows the use of BeXei as an auxiliary, to form the 
future infinitive — 0eA.€t elcrOai = eo-rat, shall be. 

4. It shows that the modem Greeks have adopted the 
Romanesque method of rhyming. 

5. It illustrates the modern Greek pronunciation. 
Reading the signs over the shops in Hermes street is a 

pleasant pastime, when one is waiting to see the King on his 
afternoon horse, or to meet a friend at the railroad station, 
which the Athenians call the o-tSrypoSpo/Aoo-Ta^/xos. 

A barber's shop is Kopelov, and the man of the razor Kopevriys. 

A common wine shop is KpaaoTroiXelov. 

A spirits of wine shop, olvoTrvevfJxnroiXetov. 

A shoemaker's shop is vTroSrjiJxiTOTrajXelov. 

A pawn shop, xpwixaTOTrwXeiov. 

A candymaker's shop, ^axapoTrAao-Tetov. 

A tobacco shop, KaTrvoTrojXelov. 

A h3.z3.SiT J TravTOTTOiXeLOV. 

Such names show how readily modern facts make themselves 
at home in new combinations of antique idiom. 

The intimacy with Mr. Francis and his family con- 
tinued after the latter' s return to the United States, and 
until his death on June 18, 1897. Here are a couple 
of letters which indicate the relations between the two 
men: 

Hamilton College, February 12, 1877. 
Hon. J. M. Francis. 

My dear Friend: Fortunately there are some things which 
fire can not touch. It consumes the wood and stubble, and 
even crumbles the brick and stone and iron, but it can not 
hurt the indomitable pluck that creates a newspaper, nor the 
honor that crowns the career of a hero in journalism. It 
brings a frog to the throat to think of that beautiful " Times " 
building devoured by flames, deluged by water, standing like 
the Parthenon, roofless and shattered. Now is the hour when 
hope and grit and work are powers that tell ; and these are 
not wanting. If the regrets and good wishes of unnumbered 



SOJOURN IN GREECE 99 

friends have any force, the last glory of the " Times " build- 
ing will be greater than the first. With best love to Mrs. 
Francis and Charley, 

Yours most heartily, 

E. N. 

Hamilton College, May 5, 1890. 
Hon. John M. Francis. 

My dear Friend: I thank you for a copy of the beautiful 
memorial of Mrs. Francis. It builds a bridge from Now to 
the Long Ago, over the nineteen years that have slipped away 
since our first interview. It helps me to realize more fully 
the wealth of civic honors which have made your career a 
genuine inspiration to young men who begin the world with 
no other capital than cheerful industry, intellectual vigor> 
fixed integrity, and a good wife. 

With most hearty good wishes and best love, 
Yours very gratefully, 

Edward North. 

His experience in Greece led to one of the most in- 
spiring of Doctor North's poems, " The Wingless Vic- 
tory," delivered at the forty-fourth convention of the 
Alpha Delta Phi, in Utica in 1876, a brief extract from 
which concludes this chapter : 

The Wingless Victory 

The Temple of Victory stood a little to the west of the southern wing of 
the Propylcea. The statue of Victory in this temple was sculptured 'wm^&s,s. 
The difference in the modes by which Sparta and Athens expressed a similar 
feeling is characteristic of both. To secure the permanence of his favor, the 
sterner Spartans chained their deity of War to his shrine ; the Athenians^ 
with more delicacy, relieved their victory of her wings. — Wordsworth's 
" Athens and Attica." 



The pilgrim scholar raptured stands at last, 
Where Attic glory mews its mighty past. 



100 OLD GREEK 

Yon temple fair of Nike Apteros, 

Rescued from rubbish, Turkish spite and moss, 

Still looks toward Salamis across Mars Hill. 

Type of a captured people sovereign still, 

Shrine of a gracious goodness, loved, adored 

By men not born to own barbaric lord. 

It looks toward Salamis, where hearts of oak 

Tortressed free homes from slavery's yoke. 

Across Mars Hill it looks, where God unknown 

Revealed HimseK to worshipers of stone. 

And earth's strange tribes were taught that kindred blood 

Links all beneath one loving Fatherhood. 

The Pilgrim's heart thrills with a long-sought bliss, 

As climbing Athens' proud Acropolis, 

He reads that mxarble idyl deftly wrought 

To voice the triumph of immortal thought. 

Temple of Wingless Victory, it stands 

A pledge to Freedom's Sons in distant lands, 

That Power Supreme, while circling years endure, 

Will guard the True, the Beautiful, the Pure. 

II 

Greeks had their fane of Wingless Victory. 

It was a victory that came to stay. 

It knew no use for wings. It lived in speech 

That lives to-day ; in deathless thoughts that reach 

Through all the bloody wars of Right with Wrong, 

Through all the fruitful years of Art and Song. 

With Art's unworded eloquence it spoke, 

When shapes divine from marble tombs awoke ; 

It spoke when thrice ten thousand freemen found 

Their freedom championed in Prometheus Bound. 

Breathing chivalric grace of Homer born, 

It nursed each true Athenian's lofty scorn 

Of plaudits won by bribe, of vulgar fame 

Without the perfume of a taintless name. 

It taught how centuries old and new conspire 



SOJOURN IN GREECE lOI 

To hymn his praise, who dares, with heart on fire, 
To fling defiance at the despot's chain, 
And die rejoicingly for freedom's reign. 

Ill 

The hero's soul looks through Time's clouded sky, 

And girds its loins for wingless victory. 

It scorns the sudden, sordid gain that wears 

Impatient wings half hid by eating cares. 

It scorns the fevered rush for Fashion's freaks, 

The greed for office snatched by mousing cliques. 

It scorns to crawl through crooked, unclean ways, 

It waits for Duty's clarion and obeys. 

If calumny let loose its viper tongue, 

It stands unhurt in innocence of wrong. 

Let all the sky be black with lies hellmade, 

It walks triumphant in their harmless shade ; 

And when the last of earth comes, it can fling 

Its mortal robes aside, and proudly sing, 

With martyred Paul, O death, where is thy sting ? 

IV 

We are God's temples, beautiful within, 

When prayer and holy purpose conquer sin. 

Not Athens' Nike Apteros could stir 

Such depths of love as Christlike character. 

Less charms had chiseled rhythms of Phidian frieze 

Than wisdom's words from sweet-voiced Socrates, 

Where shifting waters glide to sow good seed. 

While patience waits the fruit of righteous deed. 

Such spotless purity of love to wear. 

Temptation spreads in vain its baited snare. 

To trample out the fires of brutal lust, 

To accept the penalties of being just. 

Sooner be right alone than wrong with kings — 

This gives the victory that hath no wings. 



CHAPTER V 

SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE AND RELATIONS WITH 
THE STUDENTS 

The Early Sectarian College and its Struggles — Doctor 
Simeon North, Fifth President — Edward North's Pecul- 
iar Relations to the Institution — Professor Hopkins's 
Eulogy — An Employment Agency for Teachers — Robert 
College — Alumniana — Half-century Annalists' Letters 
— Necrologist — Addresses at Alumni Reunions — Trib- 
ute TO Alma Mater — The Christmas Greeting of 1901. 

When he died in 1903, Edward North had known 
Hamilton College as student, professor, and trustee for 
sixty-eight years, out of the ninety-one years of its 
existence under the charter of 18 12. No other man 
has had relations with the institution which approxi- 
mate his service in length of time, or in intimacy and 
importance. Fully to understand these relations, and 
properly to measure the value of his service, it is neces- 
sary to realize the conditions surrounding the institution 
during the greater part of his connection with it. 

In his memoir of Doctor Mark Hopkins, President 
Franklin Carter speaks of the Williams College of half a 
century ago as " provincial," and describes the stress it 
was under, an isolated and sectarian institution, to main- 
tain itself against the competition of larger, wealthier, 
and more aggressive institutions, which swept in the best 
class of young men from the centers of culture. His 
picture will fit in many ways the early situation at 
Hamilton. Its history has been an unbroken struggle 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 103 

to maintain itself under adverse conditions that called 
for real heroism and self-denial on the part of the little 
body of earnest men who consecrated their lives to the 
work of building up an institution intended to promote 
"the reign of virtue and the kingdom of the Blessed 
Redeemer." It was founded in 1794 as the " Hamilton 
Oneida Academy," by Samuel Kirkland, a graduate of 
Princeton, who was then laboring as a missionary among 
the Oneida Indians in central New York. The gov- 
ernment had given Kirkland lands in payment for 
patriotic services, and he donated three hundred acres 
of the grant as his first offering toward the establish- 
ment of the new institution of learning. The pioneer 
academy supplied an educational want in a section of 
the state which was rapidly increasing in wealth ; and 
in 18 1 2 it was converted into a college under circum- 
stances full of promise. 

It drew five of its first six presidents from Yale Col- 
lege ; and was a literal transplanting to the soil of New 
York state of a New England college, the original pur- 
pose of all of which is indicated by the language of the 
Yale College charter, granted in 1700, and establishing 
" a school wherein youth may be instructed in the arts 
and sciences, who, through the blessing of Almighty 
God, may be fitted for public employment both in 
church and civil state." Denominational in character, 
primitive and austere in its surroundings, isolated in 
situation, far removed from the centers of business 
activity, limited in endowment and facilities, Hamilton 
College had little to offer the student outside of that 
which came from the personal instruction of its faculty, 
and the influences for good which dominated its atmos- 
phere. It was " a place for health, and cheerful study, 
and kind feelings, and fine morals," and for little else. 
Those who went thither for an education were as a rule 



104 OLD GREEK 

the sons of the farmers of the surrounding counties, and 
they worked hard for their diplomas, not only with their 
books ; they sawed their own wood and built their own 
fires, and endured bodily privations on that bleak hill- 
top ; but they got something in return which was worth 
the getting, and they got it largely from personal con- 
tact with the little group of instructors whose lives were 
examples of good living, earnest purpose, and genuine 
self-sacrifice. One reason why so unusually large a 
proportion of the graduates of Hamilton have won dis- 
tinguished places in all the walks of life is to be found 
in the habit of self-denial inculcated by their surround- 
ings during the four years in college. 

In his introductory note to Doctor Tyler's " History 
of Amherst College," Doctor Richard S. Storrs has de- 
scribed the college life and college methods of those 
days, in a way that perfectly fits the situation at 
Hamilton. " The relation of the faculty to the students 
in American colleges," he writes, ** was at that time 
more nearly a paternal relation than it has been in late 
years, or is likely ever again to become. Possibly this 
was still more marked at Amherst than commonly else- 
where. The college community there was never a large 
one, embracing at most not more than two hundred and 
fifty students and teachers. The average age of those 
entering college was undoubtedly less than at present. 
The modern scheme of elective studies was wholly un- 
known; and the emulation in athletic exercise between 
classes and colleges, which now fastens such eager 
attention, was then as much a thing of the future as 
were telephones or typewriters. The governing aspira- 
tion of leading minds in the college was for success in 
studies, for enlarged thought-power, for a more facile 
and vigorous literary skill, and for ease and energy in 
debate. The aim of those to whom were committed the 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 105 

various offices of instruction and discipline was there- 
fore largely a moral aim — not solely, or chiefly, to give 
particulars of knowledge in science, philosophy, or good 
letters, but to do this in constant subordination to the 
virile training of mental power, with the building up of 
symmetrical and strong character. As President Stearns 
indicated, I think, in his inaugural discourse of forty 
years since, the accepted purpose of the college was to 
produce the highest manhood among those who came 
under its tuition ; and every teacher was expected, and 
was inspired, to do his best work for those set under 
him through personal contact — not only instructing 
them on themes and by text-books, but imparting from 
himself an immediate intellectual and moral vigor. Per- 
haps the earlier scheme was too narrow in comparison, 
and failed to put a just emphasis on important matters. 
But it had its own merits, and is still affectionately 
remembered by those who recall it, even while universi- 
ties are becoming encyclopedic in character, and have it 
for their controlling purpose to give information on all 
sorts of subjects, with only slight occasional relations 
between the teachers and the taught. The distinct per- 
sonal and moral effects of the earlier plan were cer- 
tainly in some respects more significant than those now 
contemplated. Class fellowship under it became more 
intimate and more animating than it now can be. 
There was a common inspiriting college life, which 
affected more or less each one brought within its range; 
while still the individuality of students was not destroyed 
or limited — was only, in fact, cherished and reenf orced 
— by this prevailing but unseen force." 

The young man who dedicated his life to teaching 
in this small, struggling, isolated, straitened college, 
had courage and faith, a fine spirit of devotion to the 
teacher's calling, and small thought for material rewards. 



I06 OLD GREEK 

He elected to share in the poverty of the college, in its 
cramped facilities, and in its limited opportunities. An 
illustration of this spirit was shown when Doctor Simeon 
North, the uncle of Edward, decided to cast in his lot 
with Hamilton College. He was elected to the chair of 
ancient languages in 1829 ; and he came to the college 
in the midst of the most trying experience in its history. 
In his annalist's letter for 1879, ^^ has graphically de- 
scribed the situation of the college fifty years earlier ; 
and the account is reproduced in these pages, as a nec- 
essary background to the life of Edward North. The 
college itself was but seventeen years old when Simeon 
North identified himself with it ; so that the services of 
the two Norths cover all but those first seventeen years 
of its history, and seventy-seven years in time. 

When the official notice of my appointment as Professor of 
Language in Hamilton College reached me, I had under consid- 
eration a call for settlement in one of the best parishes in Con- 
necticut. Without hesitation, however, I decided to accept the 
professorship, although I had little knowledge of central New 
York, and still less of the history and condition of Hamilton 
College. This decision I made, because, while it seemed to 
open a field for useful labor, it also promised to gratify what in 
this time was with me almost a master passion, fondness for the 
pursuits and employments of academic life. With the official 
notice of my appointment, I received also a request, that in 
case of acceptance, I would attend the commencement exer- 
cises of the year, then to be held in the month of August, and 
deliver an inaugural address. I made my first journey up the 
valley of the Mohawk, in the stage coach of those times, and 
presented myself at the college on the day before commence- 
ment. It was with much surprise that I learned there was no 
senior class to graduate, and with still greater surprise that I 
heard an account of the causes which had driven most of the 
students from the college, and most of the professors from the 




WA 'fy: 



j.ylr^^ 



Dr. Simeon North, Fifth President of Hamilton College. 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 107 

chairs which they had occupied. These causes, it was stated, 
had arisen in a long and bitter controversy between the presi- 
dent, Doctor Henry Davis, on the one side, and prominent 
members of the board of trustees on the other. As stated by 
General Kirkland, then president of the board, " the captain 
of the ship and the crew could not agree, and it was therefore 
impossible to keep the vessel on her course ; " and as said and 
seriously maintained by another prominent member of the board. 
Rev. Doctor Lansing, in whose views other clerical members 
of the board were known to sympathize, *' under the circum- 
stances, it was impossible to keep the ship afloat, and they 
ought, therefore, to clear the deck, take in the sails, and let 
her drift under bare poles." 

If allowed to carry out the figure used by these eminent gen- 
tlemen, I can truly say, that in my first introduction to Hamilton 
College it presented the appearance of a bark, which, on a voy- 
age apparently successful and prosperous, had suddenly been 
overtaken by a tempest, which had swept her deck, and shat- 
tered her timbers, and set her afloat, as a dismantled wreck 
upon the waters. To dismiss the figure — I found that ten of 
the trustees of the college had resigned ; that of the permanent 
officers of the college, but two remained, viz.. Doctor Davis, the 
President, and Doctor Noyes, the Professor of Chemistry ; and 
that of the students but nine were left, and these, members of 
the two lower classes — that im^nortal nine, as they have some- 
times been justly termed, who held their places, and regularly 
discharged their duties, while others forsook the institution — 
the nine who thus made themselves a connecting link between 
the coflege as it was in the early times of its prosperity, and 
as it has since been, in the times of its later growth and ad- 
vancement. I hold that among the friends of Hamilton Col- 
lege, these students are worthy of being held in perpetual 
remembrance, and as a means of contributing to this remem- 
brance, I take pleasure in here recording their names. They 
were : O. S. Wilhams, Benjamin H. Caldwell, J. A. Woodruff, 
Daniel D. Pratt, Thomas T. Davis, John Cochrane, Huet H. 
Bronson, John Dean, and Samuel Eells. 



I08 OLD GREEK 

The years 1829 and 1830 present a break in the regular 
succession of graduated classes. The reasons for this break 
may be found in the circumstances stated above. Those who 
may desire a more full and minute statement of these circum- 
stances will find it in a pamphlet, now rarely met with, but 
doubtless to be found in the college library, entitled " Davis's 
Narrative of the Embarrassments and Decline of Hamilton 
College." 

Without attempting to repeat what Doctor Davis in this pam- 
phlet has given in detail, it may not be without use here to say, 
that after Doctor Davis had entered upon his office, as the head 
of the college, and while the institution was rapidly growing in 
pubKc estimation, and in the number of its students, two great 
mistakes were made. The first was an interference on the 
part of the trustees, by means of a committee, in the internal 
management and discipline of the college, in a case of wrong 
doing among the students, which called indeed for discipline, 
but which should have been managed and disposed of by the 
faculty alone. This interference, though it did not at the time 
interrupt the progress of the college, left in the minds of many 
connected with it seeds of dissatisfaction which years after bore 
fruits of bitterness and discord. The second mistake was a 
decision of the trustees, with the concurrence of the faculty, 
to expend in the erection of new college edifices the perma- 
nent funds of the institution — funds which should have been 
kept intact and in reserve for the support of the college in- 
structors and for the other current expenses. This, indeed, is 
a mistake often repeated in the history of American colleges, 
and destined doubtless still to be repeated as long as colleges 
shall be multiplied in the land, as if accumulations of brick 
and stone and mortar, piled up in the form of tasteful edifices, 
could make a college worthy of the name, without adequate 
support for a board of instruction and other helps for students 
in the form of libraries and apparatus. 

To this moribund institution, Simeon North did not 
hesitate to dedicate his life ; and the period of its slow 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 109 

but Steady revival dates from his coming. Upon the 
retirement of President Joseph Penney, in 1839, his ten 
years' service as a professor won for him an election as 
the fifth president of the college. This office he held 
until 1857, when he resigned, after a peaceful and 
prosperous presidency, having given diplomas to six 
hundred and sixty-one graduates and honorary alumni 
in nineteen classes. The fifty-five years of his service 
as professor, president, and trustee cover a period of 
greater relative growth, in endowment, in facilities, and 
in number of students, than any corresponding period 
in the annals of the college. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to describe the 
unique relation to the college which Doctor Edward 
North established in the course of his fifty-eight years 
of service, and the methods and instrumentalities upon 
which he reUed. It was a relationship resembling that 
which many other professors have held in other col- 
leges, in greater or less degree ; but never of quite the 
same kind. It differs in one most important particular 
from that of Doctor Mark Hopkins of Williams College, 
of whom President Carter truly says that " his career as 
administrator, teacher, author, and example, leading the 
college to success and honor for thirty-six years, stands 
without a parallel in the history of American colleges." 
During that thirty-six years Mark Hopkins was the 
responsible head of Williams College, with the prestige 
and the initiative power which the position carried, and 
his remarkable personality augmented. Doctor North 
reached the summit of his usefulness and influence as 
the occupant of a professor's chair ; and from that subor- 
dinate post he radiated the influence which dominated 
the institution and determined its character in the mind 
of those who knew it intimately. The length of his 
service was undoubtedly an important element in creat- 



no OLD GREEK 

ing this influence. The entire personnel of the board of 
trustees changed at least twice, between his election and 
his death. The roll of the faculty was rewritten many- 
times, with his name the only one remaining of those in 
whose company it had long appeared. Thus it naturally 
came to be true, as one after another of the earlier men 
connected with the college passed on to the roll of the 
stelligerents, that the alumni learned to look upon 
Edward North as the link which connected the college 
of this day with the college of their day. But it was 
his singular personality which led them to think of him 
also as typifying the college — as its soul, its guide, its 
hope, its strength. The best epitome of his career and 
influence in the college and upon the students and 
alumni, came from the pen of Professor A. Grosvenor 
Hopkins, in 1887; and I shall rely upon this, and upon 
other tributes from the alumni to furnish the eulogy of 
this memoir : 

Professor North's professional career covers considerably 
more than half the period of the entire life of the college. 
He has served under four presidents — Doctors North, Fisher, 
Brown, and Darling — and his recollection as a student goes 
back to the time of Doctor Penney, who was fourth in office 
from Doctor Backus. He has held office for a period longer 
by nine years than any other officer who has ever been con- 
nected with the college. He has been identified, therefore, 
with all that is best in her history; with the period of her 
greatest growth and expansion. He knows her history and 
embodies her traditions and spirit more thoroughly than any 
other alumnus of Hamilton. He has known and lived and 
labored with some of the self-sacrificing men who stood by the 
cradle of our Alma Mater. The campus has been beautified, 
new buildings have been added, the course of instruction has 
been enlarged and modified, the constitution of the corps of 
instructors has been entirely changed ; while Professor North, 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE m 

still in the vigor of life, remains, connecting the present 
with the past, and giving a sort of permanence and continuity 
to the college history. He is the most prominent figure in the 
foreground. His Hfe has long run parallel with her life. She 
has had no more steadfast friend and servant. She has no 
better exponent of her culture. The alumnus who thinks of 
the college thinks first of him. These two pictures — the 
school of learning and the loyal instructor — are seldom sepa- 
rated in the consciousness of the graduates of Hamilton. 

* * * Professor North's services to the college have been 
inestimable and varied. His work as an instructor has had a 
pronounced and permanent value ; yet this is but one of the 
many lines of activity in which he has done good service to 
the college, to its graduates, and to the general cause of 
education. In public addresses, in contact with schools and 
teachers throughout the state, in the work of the convocation 
at Albany, his influence has been quietly but deeply felt. He 
has often been the unknown power to whose influence or advice 
were due many of the movements in the academic world. A 
quasi power of appointment to many of our New York schools 
has for many years resided in his hands, and the long and 
successful line of instructors in Robert College found its 
origin, and in many cases its continuance, in consultation with 
him. A more subtle influence, contributing positively to the 
strength of the college, has been found in Professor North's 
constant and varied correspondence with our alumni. The 
stroke of his pen has started a throb of interest in the almost 
fossil heart of many an alumnus beginning to be oblivious of 
his Alma Mater. Through the medium of these numberless 
letters the tide of sympathy and affection has been kept mov- 
ing to and fro between the college and her widely scattered 
sons. Not merely in the line of sentiment has this labor been 
of value. It has furnished us statistics of a most interesting sort. 
It has kept us informed as to all matters of importance in con- 
nection with the lives and labors of our alumni. The contribu- 
tions under the head of " Necrology " and " Alumniana," in the 
" Hamilton Literary Monthly," have cost much time and labor ; 



112 OLD GREEK 

and, though often overlooked by those in search of " Hterature," 
will be found hereafter to have a positive and permanent value. 
Professor North's skill and success as an instructor have been 
founded upon his painstaking fidelity, his untiring patience and 
his inexhaustible sympathy with young men, even with the dull 
and indolent. Doctor Arnold once blazed out in wrath upon a 
pupil who was making bad work of a passage in Greek, but was 
silenced at once by the reply, " I am doing as well as I can, 
sir." Our modern interpreter of Thucydides is not provoked, 
even by dullness, to the language of satire or anger. The 
patience which assisted the feebly equipped of thirty years ago 
over the perplexing archaisms of Homer, or through the bewil- 
dering forms of the dialect of Theocritus, is still unexhausted and 
still finds ample room for exercise. But above and beyond all 
this there is another fact which may serve to explain the success 
and the charm which have attended upon the instruction of 
Professor North. There is a subtle power, it is said, in every 
foreign language, which eludes and defies an attempt to trans- 
fer a masterpiece from such a language to our own. It is at 
least true that it requires a poet to translate a poet. In Pro- 
fessor North the power of imagination and of poetic expression 
is highly developed. His style of composition in prose has an 
indefinable element of music and rhythm. Though often using 
polysyllabic words, his language is always melodious. His 
ventures in song have given proof of a power to array thought 
in a graceful and poetic garb. His power of expressing truth 
in striking and epigrammatic forms is rare, and is witnessed in 
the list of class mottoes running through more than a quarter 
of a century. These mottoes, if collected, would form a series 
of maxims, inspiring and practical, equal almost to those of 
Cato or of Benjamin Franklin. They illustrate a power of 
felicitous expression, in Greek as well as in English, which few 
men possess. This happy faculty appears in the classroom 
interpretation of the Greek poets. The flavor of the original 
is not lost in the English version. The musical Greek is also 
musical English. The Greek compound, which, in the hands 
of a novice, contains nothing but a crude jargon, becomes, in 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 113 

the hands of the master, smooth and melodious. The poetic 
rendering, the happy collocation of words, the apt phrase, the 
coinage even of new expressions to meet the demands of the 
original, are all famiHar to those who have studied under Doctor 
North. He is permeated with the spirit of Greek life and 
letters, and his style of thought and composition is quite as 
much Attic as English. But we must leave memory to do the 
rest of the work, and to add the finishing touches to this very 
inadequate and fragmentary sketch. These few words will 
serve to start lines of thought which will call up in many 
minds pleasant recollections of the past. May the sons of 
Hamilton long find it their privilege to study the masterpieces 
of Greek literature under the guidance of a scholar so genial 
and so wise as Doctor Edward North. 

Beyond question the explanation of the feeling which 
Professor Hopkins describes was the personal relation- 
ship which Doctor North established with the individual 
student — a relationship possible only in the environment 
of the small college. He knew them all ; he welcomed 
them all to his home; he became their confidant and 
adviser in their discouragements and ambitions. His 
personal feeling towards the individual student is shown 
by an extract from his journal, written on the occasion 
of the death of one of the students, as the result of an 
accident in sliding down College Hill : 

November 28^ i^SS- — To me the death of young Ferrin is 
the loss of a personal friend. I examined him when admitted 
to college, and formed then a high opinion of his talents and 
character. He often called at my study, and talked over 
with me his plans for study, and writing, and future usefulness. 
We have met each other in the classroom, almost every day 
for more than six college terms. There is something in this 
abrupt conclusion to pleasant and intimate relations and 
intercourse that is like shutting out sunshine from one's daily 
path. The eye will grow misty and swim as it runs over a 



114 C>LD GREEK 

list of associated names, and meets with that of one whose 
accustomed promptness and fidelity are now replaced by 
vacancy and silence. The mind will sadden and weary over 
its wonted book of Doric verse, when every page recalls the 
familiar tones of one whose voice in the classroom will be 
heard no more. The very landscape that has lost an admirer 
seems to put on mourning ; and the trees that skirt the walks 
he used to tread seem to look at each other sorrowfully and 
with gloomy whispers. 

This personal relationship between Doctor North and 
his students did not terminate with the four years in 
college. He followed the young men out into the world, 
and kept in touch with them wherever they went. Thus 
he became the medium through whom the alumni kept 
up their relations with the college, and their interest in 
Alma Mater. As secretary of the Alumni Association, 
he carried on the correspondence of the college with its 
graduates. His daily mail, of this kind, resembled in 
volume that of the manager of a large business corpora- 
tion. The amount of physical drudgery he underwent 
in this correspondence was prodigious, and difficult to 
realize in these days when letters are dictated to stenog- 
raphers and transferred by the typewriter. At one 
time, on visiting " Halfwayup," a classmate of mine was 
distressed to observe the unnecessary physical strain 
which all this labor involved; and a little later there 
arrived at the homestead a beautiful Remington type- 
writer, with the loving suggestion from Henry Harper 
Benedict, that the professor could easily write upon it 
after a few days' practice, and it would save his strength 
and increase his usefulness. Some effort was made to 
profit by Mr. Benedict's kindly suggestion ; but not 
much. The professor could not overcome the feeling 
that a typewritten letter lacks the flavor of individuality. 
It was a feeling similar to another he had — one of 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 115 

abhorrence for the postal card. He likened the user of 
this modern time-saving invention to the man who 
carries his heart on his sleeve, and posts his private 
thoughts for the public eye — never in his life did he 
use a postal card. Instead, in that large, distinct, char- 
acteristic chirography, which, as Doctor Johnson says, 
"was unlike any other that ever put a thought into 
words," he wrote out every letter and addressed every 
envelope. 

Some entries in his journals indicate how much 
drudgery all this involved : 

April I'/, iSyy. — Wrote all day, without making a very 
large hole in the big pile of unanswered letters. 

June 10, i8yi. — Addressed two hundred envelopes to 
alumni with blank ballots for election of trustees. 

June 18, iSyy. — Addressed three hundred and fifty circu- 
lars to alumni, with blanks for voting. 

November 10, iSyy. — The days are too short for the 
endless work that presses to be done. Wrote letters until 
midnight. 

January 2j, iSyS, — Received four petitions signed by all 
the students in the four classes, asking for a lecture in the 
village course. How can I undertake it ? 

March 4, iSyS. — Began the preparation of a list of 
published books written by alumni of Hamilton College. 
The list will be more than respectable, if it can be made 
complete. 

April 2j, i8y8. — Declined to read at the Irving Club 
next Thursday evening. Declined to read a paper at the 
next meeting of the University Convocation — what can one 
do, who can neither eat nor sleep ? 

March 16, 1880. — Oh, that I had the strength to do the 
good work that is waiting to be done. 

Out of the personal friendships of the classroom, 
sprang the intimacies which continued between Doctor 



Il6 OLD GREEK 

North and the graduates of the college. The professor 
kept in constant touch with his boys. It was his rule 
to leave no letter from a graduate unanswered, and no 
appeal for assistance failed of acknowledgment. He 
had a habit of following them up, as perchance they 
moved from one place to another, with a letter or a cata- 
logue, or a commencement scheme ; and the chirography 
on the envelope told them that they were not forgotten 
at the Alma Mater. It was this persistent following of 
the graduates that led one of them, at a recent com- 
mencement, to this allusion in rhyme: 

No son of hers, whatever be his lot 
Need fear his name or he himself 's forgot. 
For him there waits no monumental stone, 
Bearing the dismal epitaph " unknown." 
A gentle soul, whose placid life has been 
A poem written on the hearts of men. 
Views the whole field with quickened vigilance ; 
Marks every change with sympathetic glance ; 
Notes when the summons comes to every one, 
And drops upon each grave a benison. 

This interest in the graduates was not sentimental but 
practical; and it took on its practical form chiefly in 
the service he rendered in finding opportunity for the 
graduates to begin their career as teachers. It is safe 
to say that Doctor North found schools for a thousand 
graduates from the college during the period of his pro- 
fessorship. His study was literally an employment 
bureau for teachers, and he was written to from all parts 
of the country to supply instructors. Nothing in Hfe 
gave him greater pleasure than the laborious detail in- 
volved in this locating of teachers. 

To understand the importance of the service thus 
rendered, it must be recalled that it began before the 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 117 

days of the teachers' agencies, when there existed no 
business medium through which the teacherless school 
could be brought into contact with the seeker after a 
teachership. For more than forty years Doctor North 
regularly and continuously discharged all the functions 
now assumed by the teachers' agency ; and he did it all 
without money and without price. From all over the 
country came requests to him for teachers ; these were 
docketed for reference, and the graduates of each class 
were sent to the institution for which their qualifications 
seemed to best fit them. It was chiefly through his 
influence that so large a proportion of Hamilton grad- 
uates are found in the teacher's profession. 

He sent his roots deep into the soil of the place, for 
he knew that the best life could only be nourished by 
permanent relations. But his love for Hamilton College 
was not exclusive or selfish. He was wide and mag- 
nanimous in his interests, and rejoiced in the prosperity 
and progress of other colleges. Especially solicitous 
was he for the success of the young and struggling col- 
leges and academies in which he located his own boys 
and inspired them to do their best work. The number 
of these institutions which looked to him for advice and 
suggestion was surprisingly large. Perhaps the one 
that appealed most strongly to his sympathy was 
Robert College in Constantinople. This institution was 
founded in 1863, by Christopher R. Robert, of New 
York city, who found in Doctor North his most trusted 
counselor in all his plans for the development of that 
unique and hazardous educational experiment. Thither 
Doctor North sent, from year to year, graduates of 
Hamilton — the pick of the classes — to take each 
other's places in the college faculty, and there has been 
more than a score of them on its catalogue. In one of 
his lectures on the English language, Doctor North 



Il8 OLD GREEK 

eloquently alluded to the location and the mission of 
Robert College. 

On the European side of the Bosphorus, seven miles above 
the Golden Horn, stands the castle of Roumeli Hissar, where 
it has sentineled the dominion of the false prophet upward 
of four centuries. Into the thick walls of this strong for- 
tress the broken pillars of Christian churches were built by 
Mahomed II, in 145 1, two years before Constantinople sur- 
rendered to the Turks, ^schylus tells us in the " Prome- 
theus Bound," that here the frenzied lo made the crossing 
that gave to the Strait of Bosphorus its legendary name. 
Herodotus puts it into his history that here, where the 
Bosphorus is narrowest, was built, 500 B.C., the famous bridge 
over which Darius led his forces into Scythia. Here, seated 
on a throne, hewn out of rock, Darius proudly reviewed his 
army on its march to defeat. Here he ordered two marble 
columns to be inscribed, in Greek and Assyrian, with the 
names of the many nations that obeyed his scepter. 

The planting of an American college on this historic and 
beautiful spot, where two continents meet, and where the his- 
tory of civilization is epitomized, honors the sagacity of its 
American founder. Here the traveler sees the stars and 
stripes floating above a large stone structure, that dominates 
the view of the Bosphorus almost from the Black sea to the 
sea of Marmora. The founder of this college had read his- 
tory with something of prophetic vision. He believed, and 
gave a generous practical expression to his belief, that the 
best way to rejuvenate the East was to introduce the English 
language, inspired with the best American ideas. On this 
theory Robert College is to-day a prosperous and growing 
institution. It is recognized by England, France, and Ger- 
many as a seat of liberal culture, making good all its profes- 
sions, and modestly yet positively being what it seems to be. 
Under the presidency of Doctor George Washburn, it is pros- 
perous and growing, though surrounded by hostile Turks, 
whose ignorance it rebukes, and drawing its support largely 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 119 

from peoples desolated by war or by Moslem despotism. 
Seventeen nationalities are represented in Robert College, 
yet all are taught to speak and write the language of Milton 
and Webster. The English Bible is a text-book for all 
classes. English hymns are sung at morning and evening 
worship. Each graduate becomes a teacher of the English 
language, and an apostle of American thought, in his home 
circle, whether it be in Armenia, or Bulgaria, or Wallachia, 
or the Isles of Greece. 

In this way Robert College, founded by the sagacity and 
munificence of a New York merchant, represents the best 
American ideas of liberty with loyalty to law, and that truest 
chivalry which honors woman as man's intellectual peer. 
Officered mainly by Christian scholars from America, for- 
tressed by the prayers of all Protestant churches, it is plant- 
ing many a handful of corn on the banks of the Bosphorus 
which shall one day shake like Lebanon. Darius, 500 B.C., 
thought to conquer by the force of arms and numbers. His 
marble columns have disappeared, with their lying record of 
conquests never gained. In their place, later by upward of 
twenty-three centuries, stands an American college, drawing 
its life from sources four thousand miles away. A stalwart 
youngling, born only sixteen years ago, nurtured amid the 
convulsions of war, it has already won for itself an intellec- 
tual and moral supremacy, that promises to live so long as 
the English language and the Golden Rule perpetuate the 
brotherhood of nations. 

Edward North was the confidential friend and adviser of 
four college presidents — Doctor North, Doctor Fisher, 
Doctor Brown, and Doctor Darling — and the loyal sup- 
porter of each in the troubles which each in turn encoun- 
tered. In like manner he was the friend and confidant 
of every member of the faculty. Whatever factions 
might exist in the faculty, whatever misunderstandings 
might arise between individual professors, Doctor North 
was never one of either faction, and was always the 



120 OLD GREEK 

peacemaker whose counsel was sought by both sides. 
Scattered through the diaries which he kept regularly 
for twenty-five years, are frequent references to these in- 
ternal troubles, which reveal him always as the " father 
confessor." While it is impossible to reproduce these 
personal memoranda, it is proper to say they reveal the 
fact that at many critical and trying periods in the his- 
tory of the college. Doctor North played a part which 
justifies the statement that his service to the institution 
was even greater than is commonly believed, and that 
his personal influence was a factor of vital importance 
for peace, charity, and brotherhood. 

He was the college editor, so to speak, and devoted 
many hours to the duty of keeping the institution before 
the public, and in touch with the outside world. He 
had an abiding faith in the efficacy of printer's ink; 
and sustained every local newspaper, not only with his 
subscription but with his pen. He put his feeling on 
the subject into rhyme one day, and tucked it away 
among some loose papers, to be forgotten until found 
after his death ; here it is : 

The dollar spent with least regret, 
That best rewards the forehead's sweat, 

Best cheers the evening hours of winter, 
And best directs the farmer how 
To turn up money with the plow, 

Is that which goes to pay the printer. 

It appears that Doctor North was once actually an 
editor. In the garret at " Halfwayup " are files of a 
weekly paper published at Clinton for several years in 
the early fifties and entitled the " Oneida Chief." I did 
not know how these newspaper files got there, or why 
they had been preserved, until I came across the fol- 




Edward North in the 6o's. 



.^ 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE I2I 

lowing undated letter in Doctor North's handwriting, 
after his death : 

Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. 

My dear Sir : I have undertaken, in connection with 
Rev. A. D. Gridley, to edit the "Oneida Chief," now pub- 
lished by Mr. F. E. Merritt. We are making an united effort 
to give to this paper a literary and practical character that 
shall be worthy, in some degree, of the place where it is 
published. My own work upon it will be mainly spent in 
preparing " Alumniana," or personal notices and items more 
especially interesting to the graduates, students, and friends 
of Hamilton College. We shall be glad to publish, from 
time to time, such letters and articles as you may be willing 
to send us for this purpose, either anonymously or otherwise. 
It is hoped that the friends of Hamilton College will aid us 
in our endeavor to bring them into a closer sympathy with 
each other, by means of published correspondence. Books, 
pamphlets, and periodicals, when sent to the editors, will be 
appropriately reviewed or noticed. 

Very respectfully, 

Edward North. 

He prepared the copy for the annual catalogues 
during the administrations of Presidents Fisher, Brown, 
and Darling, and for how many years before it is im- 
possible to say. He was the compiler of eleven trien- 
nial catalogues of the college, and the last that has been 
published. It was one of his regular duties, for many 
years, to " Latinize " the names of the graduating class, 
in order that they might receive their diplomas at the 
hands of the president on commencement day in true 
classical style. His services as the bibliographer of the 
college were not less constant or conscientious than 
those of John Langdon Sibley to Harvard University, 
and they extended over a much longer period of time. 

He contributed the " Alumniana " for every issue of 



122 OLD GREEK 

the " Hamilton Literary Magazine," from the first num- 
ber, pubHshed in 1866, down to the June number, 1902, 
the year before his death. This work represents several 
thousand pages of printed matter, and how many hun- 
dreds of hours of patient reading of newspapers, and 
letters, and wearisome preparation of copy ! 

In a brief sketch of the history of the " Hamilton Lit- 
erary Monthly," contributed to that magazine in March, 
1904, Rev. Dr. Amory H. Bradford, '6j, one of the 
founders of the magazine, declared that " the one fea- 
ture which has distinguished it, among all similar publi- 
cations, has been the work of Professor North. No one 
ever undertook such service with more affection, and no 
one ever discharged the duties of such a position with 
more sympathy or ability. He will never be forgotten 
by the alumni, whose names and achievements he has 
treated so sympathetically, and whose failures he so 
mercifully allowed to be forgotten." 

He originated and prepared the "Hamilton Mail Book," 
of which he published three editions. Once at a meet- 
ing of the Western Association of Hamilton Alumni in 
Chicago, the graduates present were minded to send 
Doctor North a token of their good will ; and they 
put it in the form of money (^200) in order that he 
might himself select the gift that would best please him. 
Back came a grateful answer in which his friends were 
told that they had lifted a load from his mind, for they 
had provided the funds for printing another issue of the 
"Hamilton Mail Book." The friend to whom this deci- 
sion was written, sent back the reply : " No, we shall not 
quarrel about your disposition of our gift. * * * I can not 
imagine anything more characteristic of Professor North, 
than this turning of our Christmas gift back to us, in the 
shape of something for our benefit, instead of keeping it 
for his own." 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 123 

It is difficult to convey an adequate conception of the 
volume of Doctor North's newspaper contributions in 
the interest of the college. During the fifteen years 
that the writer was associated with the " Utica Morning 
Herald," no event occurred in the college history, of 
interest to the public, which was not promptly and fully 
written out and forwarded for publication. Often this 
involved night trips to Utica, and the preparation of 
copy long after midnight. Literally he made himself 
the slave of the college ; but his love was so deep that 
the slavery was a joy. 

The series of half -century annalists' letters at Hamilton 
College was Doctor North's conception. The series 
began in 1865, with a letter from George Bristol, of 
the class of 181 5, the first class to graduate, and has 
continued since without a break. Doctor North him- 
self furnished the letter in 1891, when he wrote that 
"the position of a half -century annalist holds out no 
summons to loud merriment. It is more in the nature 
of an invitation for one who * lags superfluous on the 
stage' to make his farewell deliverance, to detail his 
personal reminiscence, and to say his cheerful good 
wishes to the younger graduates before he takes his 
final sleep." He wrote the introduction to Mr. Dodge's 
published collection of annalists' letters, in which he 
said : 

Whenever the history of Hamilton College comes to be 
fully and worthily written, the historian will find himself 
largely and gratefully indebted to the half-century annal- 
ists, who have presented successively many dates, hints, 
impressions, and personal sketches that will be duly focused 
and elaborated in a continuous narrative. The half-century 
letter is believed to be an original, autochthonal product of 
Hamilton College. Its beginning was with the first class 
that was graduated, and each successive class, on reaching 



124 OLD GREEK 

its fiftieth anniversary, has left a record, more or less com- 
plete, of its undergraduate experiences. If any other Ameri- 
can college has been equally fortunate, it is to be congratulated 
on its wealth of unorganized history. 

What is here said about the history of Hamilton 
College is true : it is all, except the inner, unwritten, 
unwritable history, contained in this series of forty odd 
annalists* letters. It explains partially why Doctor 
North never carried out a plan which many alumni 
had near at heart, and which was often spoken of at 
the alumni reunions, that he should write this history,^ 
on the order of Doctor William S. Tyler's " History 
of Amherst College," published in 1871, and again in 
1895. All that he ever did in that direction is the brief 
sketch of the college, written in 1877, and published in 
a volume called "The College Book," edited by Henry 
F. Clark of Cambridge. Brief extracts from this sketch 
appear in this volume. Once, in his later years, I asked 
him why he did not continue and extend that sketch so 
that we might have a complete and continuous history 
of the college. His answer was : " It would be a his- 
tory of a series of tragedies ; think of Doctor Fisher, 
Doctor Brown, Doctor Darling — not to go further 
back. It is history that were better not written by one 
who knows so much about it as I do." That such a 
history was long in Doctor North's mind, and was 
reluctantly abandoned, may be inferred from this entry 
in his diary under date of May 18, 1850 : 

1 Doctor North prepared and read before the Irving Club a collection of 
facts and dates relating to Hamilton College, which he described as "an 
unorganized procession of historical events, giving the order of their occurrence, 
from year to year, and reaching through a period of more than a century. No 
effort has been made to weave these facts into a narrative form or to frame 
them into a philosophy. No attempt has been made to explore and elucidate 
causes, motives, and remote consequences." This paper was published in the 
" Hamilton Literary Magazine," October and November, 1904. 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 125 

On the 20th of last February, I walked to the grave of Jesse 
Curtiss with Doctor Dwight. We conversed about the affairs 
of the college, and I disclosed to him a purpose, which I had 
half formed, of writing the history of Hamilton College. He 
seemed to be pleased with the project, and gave permission to 
consult his books of record for such facts as I wanted. At my 
suggestion he promised to compile a financial history of the 
college, when he found leisure for it. He prided himself very 
much, and very properly, on the success which had attended 
his management of the college funds. 

But there is another kind of history from Doctor 
North's tireless pen — that contained in the long series 
of necrological sketches of Hamilton alumni, as they 
passed from month to month and year to year into the 
ranks of the stelligerents. The number of graduates 
whose life data he thus gathered was many hundred, 
and they were complete for the period during which he 
occupied the post of necrologist in the Society of Hamil- 
ton Alumni — nearly fifty years. They ought to be col- 
lected and put into a volume, like Franklin Bowditch 
Dexter's " Yale Biographies" and John Langdon Sibley's 
" Harvard Graduates." There could be no more effec- 
tive memorial of the greatness of a small college than 
these collected sketches of the lives and services of the 
Hamilton alumni would furnish. Doctor North's feel- 
ing on this subject is shown by the following letter, 
which he wrote to a prominent alumnus of the college, 
under date of November 22, 1869: 

November 22, 1869. 
My dear Sir; I have been repeatedly urged to pre- 
pare and publish a biographical catalogue of all who have 
ever been students in Hamilton College. I have already 
made good progress in collecting materials for such a work, 
but I can see no chance for its publication, except through 
the liberality of some one of our alumni. To pubHsh such 



126 OLD GREEK 

a work would cost at least $i,ooo, and probably more. I 
make the first appeal to you as one of the earlier alumni, who 
may feel an interest in an undertaking that promises to bind 
together in closer brotherhood the scattered children of a 
common mother. All that I desire in this matter is the pay- 
ment of printer's bills. My own reward would be the pleas- 
ure of doing another service for the college and its alumni. 
With the highest esteem, 

Yours very truly, 

Edward North. 

The endeavor has been to present, in what has gone 
before, the reasons why Doctor North occupied so 
unique a place in the hearts of the Hamilton boys. 
Still further reasons are given in the chapters which 
treat of Doctor North as teacher and scholar. This 
is as good a place as any to garner some evidences 
of the relationship which seem worthy of preservation. 
Always, when there were reunions and gatherings of 
the Hamilton alumni, in New York city, Chicago, and 
elsewhere, he was a guest of honor when able to attend ; 
and memoranda of the brief addresses he made on a 
number of these occasions have been found, some of 
which are presented here. Much of the effect of these 
speeches came from Doctor North's personality, and 
their influence was largely due to the light in his eye, 
the quaint smile on his lips, and the singular quaver in 
his voice, as they were spoken. They are reproduced 
without exact knowledge of the place where or the 
chronological order in which they were delivered. The 
first extract is from an address made very early in his 
career as a professor, and is a tribute to Alma Mater : 

We hear a vast deal said, on occasions like the present, 
about Alma Mater. So much we hear said, that if a back- 
woodsman — innocent of Latin honors — should chance to be 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 127 

present, it would be quite natural for him to ask, " What this 
Alma Mater was, about which he heard so much talk, and 
witnessed so much enthusiasm." I fancy that the question 
would be differently answered by different individuals. One 
who had always lived within sight of college walls, yet who 
was in the literary sense a filius nullius, would reply with 
promptness, " Why, Alma Mater is only metaphor for college. 
They mean those four-story limestone buildings on the hill 
yonder, with the whitewash peeling off, and with long wood- 
sheds in the rear." But put the query to a true-hearted alum- 
nus, and possibly he might hesitate before giving his answer. 
Possibly he might feel that an eloquent silence is better 
than empty speech. If he should try to give utterance to his 
thoughts, possibly it would be with swimming eyes, with a 
choking voice, and with a heart brimful of emotion. To him 
Alma Mater are sacred words. They are words of magic 
power. At their bidding the churchyard of memory yields 
up its saintly dead. At their bidding he is translated from 
the cold, calculating cares of manhood back to the sunshine, 
the hilarity, the hopefulness, and the freedom of his earlier 
years. Alma Mater ! blessed words ! Words of comfort 
and of healing are they to the faithful graduate. They carry 
him away from the present, and leave him at the knee of 
maternal fondness. They restore him to the sacred solici- 
tude of his mind's mother. If, while out upon the dusty 
highway of life, he has tasted the waters of political strife, 
and found them, like those of Meribah, bitter and disgustful ; 
if the honors of professional toil have proved to him a 
mockery and a weariness ; if he has realized that the friend- 
ships of the world are but too often interested and selfish, 
the mention of Alma Mater is to him like the thought of Erin 
to the exiled Irishman. It recalls the happy hours which he 
can live over again only in memory, in dreams, and in social 
interviews like the present. It recalls the season when the 
sweet, sparkling waters of Castaly leaped welcome to his lip 
— when his mind lifted its first aspirations after greatness, 
and rejoiced with a fearless, unspeakable joy in its antici- 



128 OLD GREEK 

pated triumphs, when he associated with friends who carried 
their hearts in their hands, and who gave their companion- 
ship with no thought of self, with no Iscariot motives. And 
what alumnus is there who will not take delight in cherishing 
for his mind's mother an affection similar in kind, if not in 
degree, to that which he feels toward her to whom he owes 
his existence? What alumnus is there here who will not 
respond heartily to the sentiment with which I resume my 
seat? 

"Alma Mater — the Gentle Mother to whom we are 
indebted for many richest enjoyments and many priceless 
benefits — at all times, and under all circumstances, we will 
exhibit ourselves her faithful and sustaining children." 

The following address is an effective statement of the 
advantage to the locality that springs from the existence 
of a college in its midst : 

The good of having a college among us is partly seen in 
what it has already accomplished for our own young men — 
our own as distinguished from those who come to us from 
abroad. I was surprised lately in looking over a triennial 
catalogue, to find that more than ten per cent of the gradu- 
ates of Hamilton College belong to Clinton families ; while 
upward of twenty per cent belong to Oneida county families. 
Here is a fact for us to look at. The college has now up- 
ward of a thousand graduates, and more than a hundred of 
these are members of Clinton families. If these home gradu- 
ates had been sent to an eastern college, their education would 
have cost from $100,000 to $150,000. It is then a moderate 
estimate to say that the college has already saved to the place 
that sum of money. Besides this it has brought into the town 
upward of a $1,000,000. But this is only a partial view of 
the case. It gives no full and just idea of the good of hav- 
ing a college among us. In one sense, every graduate from 
the college is a Clintonian, and represents the character of 
the place, wheresoever his lot in life may be cast. Spending 
three or four years in our midst — three or four of his most 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 129 

impressible years — mixing with us, in our daily life and walk 
and enjoyments, meeting with us at our firesides, in our places 
of worship and of business, a student becomes attached to 
Clintonians, and remembers them to their advantage, as long 
as he lives. 

The next extract tells of a practical way in which 
graduates can help a college, even though they can not 
open their purses for it : 

We are all anxious to help the college, and there are a 
dozen ways of doing it. We can help the college by set- 
ting an example of educated manhood and intelligent, up- 
right citizenship. We can help the college by giving money 
to its treasury, or books to its library, or portraits to its art 
gallery, or samples to its hall of natural history, or trees 
to its campus, or sons to its classes. We can help the col- 
lege by speaking a good word for it on the street, or the plat- 
form, or in the pulpit, or through the press, or in a womanly 
postscript. Last but not least, we can help the college by 
praying for it, and the prayer of the righteous graduate 
availeth much. The real trouble with our college is that so 
many of its alumni are Micawbers, waiting for a million to 
turn up, and bring in millennial glory. I fell in with a gradu- 
ate the other day who believes in doing something beyond 
this easy Micawberizing. He preaches the Gospel in a small 
rural parish where they pay him $500, with a donation party 
thrown in. That is good enough, what there is of it, and 
enough of it, such as it is. This rural pastor told me he 
owed the college a large debt, and wanted to pay the interest 
on it, if the college would take what he could offer. His 
salary all went for his living, and his children were all girls. 
But he prayed for the college every Sunday in the pulpit. 
He believed in special providences, and that the Lord might 
be sure to understand his prayer, he prayed for Hamilton 
College in particular, and by name, as well as for higher 
education in general. His prayer for Hamilton College had 
been answered already. Coming down from his pulpit one 



130 OLD GREEK 

Sunday, he met a sturdy cheesemaker with his little wife be- 
side him, who wanted to know about the college he had prayed 
for. Said he, " Wife and I have a boy at home, who is all for 
books, and wife thinks he ought to go to college. But we 
can't spare him yet, for he's mighty handy at milking cows." 
The minister saw his chance there, and went on to tell how 
he was drilling that boy twice a week in his Greek and Latin. 
Said he, " I'll have him ready for college in two years, and I 
mean he shall capture a key, if not the valedictory." That 
is the kind of loyalty that will build up Hamilton College. 

Extracts from a number of these brief addresses are 
given below, without exact knowledge of the time or 
place where they were spoken : 

In this centennial year. Dominie Kirkland has very de- 
cided advantages over any half-century recruit. In one par- 
ticular Dominie Kirkland has a very positive advantage. He 
is allowed to sleep quietly in the college cemetery, and is not 
called upon to do any after-dinner speaking. 

If I should have the joy of meeting Dominie Kirkland on 
the celestial hills, I shall be apt to tell him how reverently 
and gratefully his name is mentioned by Hamilton alumni ; 
that his cottage on College Hill is kept in good repair ; and 
that all he planted on College Hill is doing well, except the 
Lombardy poplars. Even the homesick Lombardy poplars 
keep on pointing heavenward, when they have nothing but 
dry sticks to point with. 

I have had serious thoughts of running away, on my last 
legs, from this eighty-first commencement, and hiding myself 
for the week in Saratoga, or Nantucket, or Chicago. But I 
am here to-day, what remains of me, after attending fifty-six 
commencements in the Old Stone church. I can honestly 
say that the deepest feeling of my heart to-day is a feeling 
of gratitude to God and gratitude to friends for the privilege 
of the last fifty years. It has been a priceless privilege and 
a most delightful duty, to be permitted to give instruction 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 131 

to two thousand young men in fifty-six successive classes. If 
any of these two thousand students have been impressed with 
the beauty and power of the Greek, as the best language ever 
spoken, next to our mother tongue, as the language selected 
by God himself for the revelation of gospel truth, that is so 
much good fruit for fifty-six years of imperfect labor in Ham- 
ilton College. 

******* 

I am glad to see that my friend, Rev. Doctor Holbrook of 
Sing Sing, is here to-night. He will be pleased with a little 
anecdote I heard not long ago, about his godly father, Dea- 
con Holbrook of Whitesboro, who was very familiar with 
Scripture, and who used to pray that the Lord would " send 
us neither poverty nor riches — especially the poverty." On 
College Hill, it seems to make no great difference whether 
we pray for poverty or for riches. We get the poverty all 
the year round. Sometimes we get it very severely. But 
we keep on doing good work for church and state, and we 
are prospered up there on College Hill, in spite of our poverty 
and isolation. We have a stronger faculty than we ever had 
before, and each man aims to make his own department one 
of the driving wheels of the college. We never had a brighter, 
brainier, manlier body of students — present company always 
excepted. We are so thoroughly Presbyterian that we have 
introduced the doctrine of election into the college curriculum, 
and it takes wonderfully with the students. Perhaps it was 
one of the things foreordained that our college should show 
the world what large results can be reached, without the 
embarrassment of riches. 

Perhaps we shall have some money some day, when our 
ship comes in. Meanwhile we are learning how to use it 
with economy. We have a splendid line of Lombardy poplars, 
each pointing upward to one of Doctor Peters 's asteroids. 
Doctor Peters calculates that his forty-two asteroids contain 
a surface upward of 268,000 square miles. Only think of it 
— more than five times as many acres as we have in the 
whole state of New York. When all that celestial real estate 



132 OLD GREEK 

comes to a good Wall street market, won't we have a booming 
time of it — we and Doctor Peters ? 

^ ^ ^ T^ ^ T^ ^ 

Translated into] simple and modest Greek it seems to 
amount to about this ; that I am arraigned, on a sort of drum- 
head indictment, for the atrocious crime of abusing the 
patience of the college for the period of forty years. In the 
presence of all these witnesses to this obstinate shortcoming 
or longstaying, the best thing I can do will be to throw my- 
self on the mercy of the court. If it please the court to be 
merciful, I promise to be out of the way before the end of 
another forty years. Forty years make something of a load 
for a mortal man to carry, but it strikes me that the immortal 
Greek is younger and livelier, more significant and meatier, 
than it was forty years ago. Calling the Greek " a fetish," 
does not quench its deathless inspiration, nor kill its vital 
roots that are intertwined with whatever is highest and most 
progressive in the nineteenth century. I am sure the Greek 
is going to hold its own so long as its descendants live among 
our English words, so long as our college keeps its lighthouse 

on the hill : 

Students come and students go, 
But Greek goes on forever. 



It is now fifty years since I enjoyed the reputation of being 
the " Old Greek," and twenty-five years since I became one 
of this Association of Hamilton Alumni. On the 17th of 
December, 1868, this Association of Hamilton Alumni was 
quietly organized in the lecture room of Professor Dwight of 
Columbia College. The first symposium of the association 
was held January 21, 1869, in the historic banquet hall of the 
Astor House. Of the fifty-four alumni who sat together 
at the first reunion, exactly one-half are still living. It is 
pleasant to meet here to-night a few of the famous fifty-four 
who cheered the opening address of Hon. Charles P. Kirk- 
land, '16, the oldest graduate then present, and the presid- 
ing officer. We have not yet forgotten the stirring response 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 133 

of President Brown, of Doctor C. H. F. Peters and his gener- 
ous friend, Edwin C. Litchfield ; of Daniel Huntington, the 
world-renowned artist ; of Professor T. W. Dwight and his 
classmate. Doctor H. A. Nelson ; of General Joseph R. 
Hawley and his classmate, Colonel Emmons Clark ; of Judge 
Alexander Spaulding and Doctor Henry B. Millard, who 
sleeps now in the cemetery of P^re la Chaise. It is a grate- 
ful fact that in its upward evolution from the Astor House to 
the Waldorf, death has kindly spared the graduates who were 
most actively engaged in the founding of this association. 
Since 1868 New York has found out that such live graduates 
as Doctor A. N. Brockway, Doctor Isaac H. Hall, and Hon. 
Elihu Root are essential to its growth and glory. And what 
they do for the growth and glory of New York is so much 
done for their mother college. 

******* 

I am grateful to our president for selecting a topic with 
such a broad and comprehensive horizon. Perhaps I am 
expected to explain what sort of an outlook each Hamilton 
graduate has for length of days. As the necrologist of our 
Hamilton alumni, the astrology that I have to deal with is 
mostly of the post-mortem variety. In necrology we get our 
horoscope of the future by studying the past. By analyzing 
the vital statistics of our stelligerent alumni, I find that 
twenty-six per cent have lived sixty years and become sexa- 
genarians ; I find that fifteen per cent have lived seventy 
years, and become septuagenarians ; seven per cent have 
lived eighty years, and become octogenarians ; one per cent 
have lived ninety years, and become nonagenarians. Two of 
the nonagenarians are still living, and are classmates. 

As Doctor North grew older and feebler, his addresses 
took on a cheerful pathos : 

I have only to report, Mr. Symposiark, that I am on my peril- 
ous way to that last one of our college honors, the headship of 
our living Hamilton graduates. I find that there are now only 
fifteen names — not counting stelHgerents — only fifteen names 



134 OLD GREEK 

between me and the oldest Hamilton alumnus. To-day it 
looks like a sort of " nip-and-tuck " struggle between Doctor 
Miller^ and myself. To-day both of us have a son and a 
grandson among the Hamilton graduates. When we reach 
that Happy Land where commencement joys are endless, 
Doctor Miller will have a good long talk with President Pen- 
ney, and I will have the comfort of locating that long-lost 
graduate who defied all efforts at finding his post ofiice address 
in this mundane sphere. 

The following was his response to a call of greeting 
from a class holding its reunion on the campus in 1900 : 

I thank you most heartily for this most agreeable greeting. 
As you already know, I am not now in the working harness. 
But I have all the consolations that live in the memories of fifty- 
seven years of activity in the work of teaching Greek to patient 
and appreciative students. It is one of the comforts in the life 
of a faithful teacher that he gains something like a parental 
interest in the success of his students. Although his students 
come to be classed as graduates, they never cease to be fondly 
remembered as soris and alumni. From this point of view age 
and retirement have golden compensations. To find on the 
mail book only fifteen graduates older than yourself has its 
funereal suggestion. But this funereal suggestion is obhterated 
by the long line of working graduates who in fifty-six classes 
are making this world a lovelier place for people to live in. 
Aristophanes, in one of his comedies, says that " old men are 
boys twice over." This allows me to count myself one of your 
number to-day. May God bless you, and make each of you a 
blessing. 

His greeting to President M. Woolsey Stryker, at the 
first alumni reunion after the latter's election follows : 

The old Greek mythology had its nine muses, each presid- 
ing over her chosen branch of the beautiful in art. Our college 

1 Rev. Dr. L. M. Miller of Ogdensburgh, New York, class of 1840, who 
died October 7, 1901. 



I ^n ■■•» I 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 135 

history has now its nine presidents, each distinguished for some 
special gift. As the ninth muse presided over Harmony, in all 
of its varieties, so our ninth president will inspire and direct 
all harmonies in the building up of our Mother College. We 
have firm faith that President Stryker will give us a new interpre- 
tation of Milton's " L'AUegro," and that he will discover for us 

Good notes, with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out. 
Notes paid at sight, with no discount, 
Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony. 

Thus is shown, in his own language, through a long 
series of years, Doctor North's feeling for the college 
and his pupils. It remains to present some of the 
evidences of the rare and touching manner in which 
this feeling was reciprocated. It often found expres- 
sion in rhyme, like the following, from the pen of an 
admirer whose name is unknown : 

******* 

Steadfast star of the north ! 
Thro' all vicissitudes of earth 

It points unerring to the pole ; 
While planets in their orbits roll 
And newer worlds are given birth, 

Its faithful hght shines forth. 

Here in our Httle world, 
Where hand clasps hand for common weal — 
Each knowing best by what hard way 
Back to this shrine his journey lay — 
And where we rest, for here we feel 
Our rival ensigns furled. 

Lo, here our fixed North Star ! 
Thro' forty years of gracious toil 
His lines unwavering have run, 
And every Alma Mater's son, 



rir^ 



136 OLD GREEK 

*Mid life's vexations and turmoil, 

He greets, both near and far. 

Safe guardian he of youth ! 
Years have not dulled his lasting prime, 

Nor checked the generous outward flow 
Of sympathy kind hearts bestow, 
Wordless as love's own pantomime. 
Or love's unplighted truth. 
^ ***** * 

Strong, gentle, loving arms, 
Where'er our lots in life be cast. 

Reach toward us with solicitude ; 
And whether peace or troubles brood, 
Their impulse is to hold us fast 

And shield us from all harms. 
******* 
Alcinous, we say ! 
Whose doorpath has no moss nor gate ; 

Of fruitage from whose trees and vines 
Each coming guest abundance finds. 
And, parting thence with simple state, 
Goes well sped on his way. 

Peace to yon hillside home, 
Where faith and love and labor dwell ! 

Heaven grant our prayer may come to pass — 
Serus in coelum redeas — 
And may all blessings rare fill well 

Thy days that are to come. 

A tribute in verse came to him on Christmas day, 
1901, from Charles S. Hoyt, of the class of '77, accom- 
panied by this letter ; 

Oak Park, III., December 12, 1901. 

The heart of every Hamilton man beats in love and grati- 
tude for you ; for your scholarship, which has helped to make 



■^ ^^ ■ .>. -^ - 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 137 

Hamilton a city set on a hill ; for your devotion to Hamil- 
ton and unfailing interest in the welfare of her sons ; for the 
worth of your Christian manhood and the width of your Chris- 
tian influence. May God bless you, as He has made you a 
blessing, and make your evening time light ! Will you accept 
the inclosed sonnet with my hearty Christmas greeting and 

wishes ? 

Faithfully, 

Charles S. Hoyt, '77. 

To Professor North 

What paean shall I sing thee, noblest " Greek " ? 

Thy blended Attic wit and wisdom praise ? 

Some strong and simple Doric shaft upraise, 
To mark thy manhood rare, thy life unique ? 
Oh, could I hear thee scan with liquid voice 

The flowing measures of Theocritus ; 

Translate those Idyls, as mellifluous 
As honey from Hymettian fields, and choice ! 
With thee we climbed th' Acropolis, to see 

That panorama from the Parthenon, 

Imagine Salamis and Marathon 
And Athens — all that gorgeous pageantry. 

Thou madest Greece a fair, enchanted land, 

By simple virtue of thy scholar's wand. 

From among the hundreds of letters in Doctor North's 
files, revealing the feeling of his students, two are here 
reprinted ; they are types of all : 

POUGHKEEPSIE HiGH SCHOOL, 

PouGHKEEPSiE, N.Y., March i, 1901. 

My dear Professor North : In the waning days of the 
previous century, about sixty of Hamilton's alumni who had 
been permitted to listen to your voice during their recitations 
of Greek lunched together. This occurred during the Prin- 
cipals' Holiday Conference at Syracuse, December, 1900. 

After the lunch it pleased our fancy to think aloud some 



138 OLD GREEK 

thoughts of former days — of days when we were students at 
old Hamilton. It was my privilege to respond to " Old 
Greek." The boys — though men grown and some of them 
accompanied by sons who are now students at Hamilton — 
knew well who was meant by that title expressive always of 
loving thoughts for the man whom all alumni of Hamilton 
would ever honor. 

I can not recall what I said, nor could I immediately when 
I had concluded. I know that I am daily conscious of great 
indebtedness to you for the influence of your life upon my 
character, nor does that influence wane. 

As I spoke, I simply thought aloud my indebtedness to the 
various and the combined influences at Hamilton, and it 
seemed to me that " Old Greek " was more nearly the per- 
sonification of the best for which Hamilton is known among 
her alumni than any other man whom I have known. And 
my thoughts met with such cordial response that one of our 
number graciously proposed that Mr. Winne be requested to 
write Professor North a letter, expressing the love of Hamil- 
ton alumni for dear " Old Greek." 

When we were boys at college, we were shy — and had 
not learned to express to our most dearly beloved our heart's 
secret. Nor have we wholly outgrown our shyness. Still we 
would express to you our gratitude for your benign and stimu- 
lating influence upon us when at college. How we did wish 
for your presence — to see you, to greet you, to look you 
frankly in the face and to say to you in tones and greeting 
— if not in bungling words : Professor North, I love you 
because you inspired in me a desire to do my best and to 
realize in my life what God has made possible. 

Of course, my words are inadequate. There is so much 
that my brethren would have me write that I am confused by 
their many expressions of gratitude. Would that I could tell 
you all ! 

I know our wishes would include for you the same beauti- 
ful and youthful life when you have grown great in years, that 
you ever manifested to us in days of yore. 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 139 

I am grateful for the opportunity to communicate to you 
the wishes of my companions. 

Most cordially, 

James Winne, '77. 
Principal James Winne. 

My dear Friend: To-morrow, if life's lamp holds out to 
burn, I shall have reached my eighty-first birthday, and it 
can bring me no richer blessing than your fraternal letter 
of March i. That brotherly letter does the work of instan- 
taneous photography, and brings into living reality forms 
and faces and voices and gifts, some of which have lived in 
memory alone for twenty-four years. Yours was a wide- 
awake, genial class, with such a variety of wholesome gifts 
that each recitation brought its special suggestion of coming 
power in some chosen field of intellectual effort. Each year 
brings some new fulfillment of undergraduate prophecy, or 
some new revelation of intellectual power. Yes — the earnest 
teacher, whose heart is in his daily duties, has joys which he 
alone can understand. As an earnest and competent teacher, 
you will understand what I but feebly express. With hearty 
thanks to you and your fellow alumni at Syracuse, 
Yours very sincerely, 

Edward North. 

One of the painful chapters in the college history was 
the " bolt " of the class of '84. The following letter, 
written seventeen years later, is a reminiscence of that 
episode. 

July 10, 1901. 

My dear Professor North : For a long time I have 
been hoping to see some one of the class of '84 do some- 
thing toward leading the class into closer touch with our 
dear college. I do not for a moment question the loyalty 
of the class. We were unfortunate in leaving things as we 
did. And while I yet believe the lamented President Darling 
made a mistake in dealing with us, I long to see and know 



140 OLD GREEK 

that every vestige of that unfortunate " bolt " is removed, and 
something put in its place that will help Hamilton. Allow 
me to say that this never will come to pass unless it be while 
you are with us. '84 loved Doctor North ; everybody does. 
I am no " Moses " ; but I propose to get at something that 
will test this matter. What I want now is your help. Can 
you give it ? Will you forgive us, and suggest something that 
the college needs ; something that you would like to have the 
college get ; something that will cost, say, about $500 ; some- 
thing that will take the place of our " class stone " ; and some- 
thing that will appeal to our men ? I am asking this of you 
because I propose to use your name in my attempt. 
Very affectionately, 

W. P. Miller, '84. 

The most striking testimonial that ever came to Doc- 
tor North of the affectionate regard of his former pupils, 
was on Christmas day, 1901, after illness had overtaken 
him, and he was shut out from the companionship of 
his friends. It was planned as a surprise for him by 
President Stryker, on the suggestion of Rev. Dr. Lewis 
Ray Foote, Brooklyn, '69, and Franklin A. Spencer, '82, 
who joined with other graduates in sending this circular 
letter to every alumnus whose address was known : 

4 

Fellow Alumnus : It has been suggested that it would be 
a graceful thing to remember " Old Greek " with a greeting 
on Christmas morning. Won't you join this greeting ? Take 
a moment, right now, then you won't forget it. Write on a 
piece of paper, your business card will do, if no more appro- 
priate sentiment occurs, the two words, " Merry Christmas," 
sign your name and class in college and date it December 25. 
Place in the inclosed envelope and mail it at once. Doctor 
Stryker has agreed to receive and keep unopened all of these 
letters, and hand them all together to Professor North on 
Christmas morning. Let's throw a little sunshine across the 
path of the old man *' half way up the hill " just for Christmas. 



SERVICES TO THE COLLEGE 141 

This circular elicited a response from more than seven 
hundred alumni, and the bushel basketful of letters, 
accompanied by a large bouquet of roses, was deliv- 
ered to Doctor North by President Stryker on Christ- 
mas morning. With the letters was a scroll, extending 
Christmas greetings, which had been prepared by the 
undergraduates, and signed by every student and every 
member of the faculty. As was said by the college 
paper at the time, it was the most unique and the most 
significant Christmas greeting that ever came to a col- 
lege professor. These seven hundred letters were an 
unbroken panegyric of affectionate regard, unstinted 
admiration, and avowal of personal indebtedness to 
" Old Greek." Many of them were couched in terms 
of eulogy so beautiful in diction and so effective in 
phrase, that they should have been reproduced here, as 
a part of this tribute to Doctor North, and as essential to 
a full understanding of the place he won for himself in 
the hearts of his students ; but there are so many of 
them, and they are all alike so genuine, that selection 
is impossible, while to print all would extend these pages 
too far. Instead of the letters, here follows the profes- 
sor's response : the last words, of any length, written 
by the hand that had finished its work. 

Yes, it was a right merrie and grateful Christmas, with 
its hundreds of kindly greetings, a merrie Christmas with 
greetings from forty states, in six languages, with holiday 
reminiscences lasting through the week, and lapping over 
this happy New Year. Salutation to the long procession of 
forms and faces that comes trooping out the misty past, still 
in the student's youthful vigor, not yet burdened with the 
coming cares of church and state, of family and school, of 
office and duty, and all saluted with the hopes of happy New 
Years still to come. Hearty thanks and a happy New Year 
to one and all who have gladdened the heart that still finds 



142 OLD GREEK 

joy in memories of the dear delightful days with Homer, The- 
ocritus, ^schylus, and Socrates, and who rejoices that he 
surrenders the cares of college to younger and wiser guard- 
ians, who will see that the Mother on the Hill is a worthy 
guide and guardian of the sons of the sons who have so 
graciously gladdened the heart of the ''Old Greek " I 



CHAPTER VI 

REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 

The Kirkland Cottage — A Tribute to Samuel Kirkland — 
Skenandoa — Samson Occum — Traditions of President 
AzEL Backus — A Bacchanal Ballad — President Backus's 
Spectacles — The Old Homes on College Hill. 

From the beginning of his connection with Hamilton 
College, Doctor North was interested in its traditions ; 
they grew and grew upon him, and it became his con- 
stant pleasure to preserve and perpetuate them. He 
missed no opportunity to revive the memory of Samuel 
Kirkland, the devoted missionary to the Oneida Indians, 
who was the real founder of the institution, and after 
whom it should have been named. His addresses make 
frequent reference to Kirkland' s career and services. 
His long and finally successful effort to preserve the 
original Kirkland cottage, and transplant it to the col- 
lege campus, to be sacredly cared for as a priceless 
heirloom, illustrates Doctor North's regard for the tra- 
ditions of the college. To the work of saving this cot- 
tage he devoted himself for several years. In his diary 
for May 2, 1877, appears this entry: ** Walked to the 
village after tea, and made calls for the Kirkland cot- 
tage. It is perilous for a man to express an interest 
in anything that requires money. Yet I mean to work 
out the saving of the Kirkland cottage ! " And so he 
did. Some months later, at a meeting of the Clinton 
Rural Art Society, Doctor North read a paper which 
sketched the history of this cottage, paid tribute to 

143 



144 OLD GREEK 

the heroic missionary who built and lived in it, and 
ended with an appeal for its preservation. This appeal 
was immediately successful. Mr. Edward Smith of 
New York, the father-in-law of Professor Chester Hunt- 
ington, happened to be present at the meeting, and 
immediately volunteered to pay the price at which the 
building was offered for sale. The paper which won 
this generous response from Mr. Smith was in the main 
as follows : 

The Kirkland Cottage 

A man is known by the house he lives in, as well as by the 
company he keeps. The paper to be read this evening is the 
result of an effort to write out a chapter of local history from 
the standpoint of the fireside. It has been written with the 
hope that facts with which some of us are already quite familiar 
may renew their interest when they are looked at in connection 
with the homes of the men of intellectual greatness who have 
set fair copy for later generations in the work of building up 
and enlarging Hamilton College. 

At the foot of College Hill lives the owner of a humble struc- 
ture, well known through the community as the Kirkland cot- 
tage. The owner is aware that this cottage was once the home 
of Samuel Kirkland. 

He seems to be aware that the sons and friends of Hamilton 
College feel toward its founder and the roof that sheltered him 
a deep interest. Yet he is so intent on securing an affirma- 
tive answer to the question Does farming pay ? that he pro- 
poses to remove the Kirkland cottage to a new location and 
compel it to do duty as a hop house, after adding to its length 
and its height, and so changing its form that it will no longer 
be recognized as the home of the missionary. Perhaps it is 
not yet too late to save the Kirkland cottage from this indignity. 
Perhaps an imminent peril of this kind was necessary to wake 
up our own slumbering sentiment, and prompt us to ask whether 
we are not, after all, negatively guilty of the same kind of insensi- 
bility to immaterial values and historical monuments. The 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 145 

owner of the Kirkland cottage attaches no value whatever to 
its history and the traditions that cling to its hewn rafters, its 
cedar shingles, its broad fireplace, its narrow bedrooms, its 
whitewood clapboards, its worn threshold, its narrow windows, 
its low ceiling; but he estimates that the entire structure is 
worth ^140, because it would cost him ^140 to purchase timber 
and lumber for a new hop house of the same size. Accord- 
ingly he has agreed to sell the Kirkland cottage for ^140, on 
condition that the money is paid within twenty days, and 
the cottage removed from his land before the end of next 
April. Perhaps a brief sketch of this cottage may help us 
to place a right estimate upon its historical value. 

In the year 1788, when George Clinton was governor, the 
state of New York united with the Oneida Indians in making 
a grant of valuable lands in Oneida county to Rev. Samuel 
Kirkland. This grant embraced about 4,760 acres, and has 
since been known as Kirkland's Patent. Its eastern line runs 
from the northwest to the southeast, along the historic " Line 
of Property," which divides Coxe's Patent from the Oneida 
reservation. It stretches from Oneida Lake, through a large 
poplar tree planted as a landmark about one hundred feet 
northeast of where we are now seated, on to the Unadilla 
river. This line of property was originally fixed by the 
Treaty of Fort Stanwix, made between the British govern- 
ment and the Six Nations in 1768, and is probably the oldest 
mark of civilization in Oneida county. 

Dominie Kirkland took possession of a part of his patent 
in 1789, clearing a few acres and building a log house east 
of the present Kirkland mansion, now owned by Mr. L. S. 
Harding. A year or two later, probably in 1 791, he built a 
small framed dwelling near the log shanty. This was the 
first sample of clapboard architecture in the Kirkland Patent, 
two years after the first framed house had been put up in the 
village of Clinton by Colonel Timothy Tuttle. 

At this time Mr. Kirkland held an appointment from the 
London Missionary Society whose American commissioners 
resided in Boston. At the same time our own government at 



146 OLD GREEK 

Washington sought the aid of Mr. Kirkland in its efforts to 
win the confidence and loyal attachment of the Indians. It 
was mainly through his influence, while living in this humble 
home, that the Six Nations remained firm in their adhesion 
to our government. 

These services were of the greatest value to the govern- 
ment at a critical period of the war for independence, and 
they will be likely to receive, as they well deserve to receive, 
still more honorable recognition during the Centennial 
Jubilee of 1876. 

Twenty-three years ago, the late Judge Chittenden of 
Watertown, who was one of the " Hamilton Oneida Boys," 
related an anecdote of Dominie Kirkland, which I have never 
seen among other memorabilia of his life and character. It 
was given by Judge Chittenden as an illustration of the 
Dominie's remarkable talent for making eleemosynary appeals 
and collections. He was in the habit of going out among 
his neighbors to solicit alms for the Indians, among whom he 
labored as a missionary. Sometimes he took with him one 
or two good-looking and well-behaved Oneidas, to emphasize 
his appeals. He once called upon Mrs. Barnabas Pond, who 
lived on the place now owned by S. W. Gunn, to ask an alms 
for the poor Indian. Mrs. Pond happened to be out of sorts 
that day, and not in a charitable mood. She had nothing to 
give. Money was scarce and provisions could not be spared. 
The Dominie persevered. He assured her that any sort of 
gift, no matter what, would be acceptable. Mrs. Pond was 
willing to soften her refusal. If a bite of cheese would be 
of any account, she wouldn't refuse to cut a cheese. The 
Dominie was quick to see his opportunity. The Indians were 
very fond of cheese, and a present of this sort would not 
come amiss. The good housekeeper brought out one of her 
large cheeses, placed a knife upon it, and asked the Dominie 
to cut it. Thoughtfully he took the knife, and after a pre- 
liminary flourish, he asks : 

" Where shall I cut this beautiful cheese, Mrs. Pond? " 

" Oh, just where you please, sir." 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 147 

" Thank you, Madam, with your kind consent, it will please 
me to cut it at horned 

And he walked off with the cheese under his arm, leaving 
Mrs. Pond somewhat astonished and puzzled, but not at all 
offended. 

One can see the devoted missionary, of a Sabbath evening, 
as he sits by the cottage door in the presence of his swarthy, 
uncounted Bible class, some of whom had walked thirty miles 
to hear him. One can see the interchange of question and 
answer, as he struggles to convey to benighted souls some 
just idea of the only true God — a Spirit infinite, eternal, un- 
changeable in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and 
truth. One can see him unappalled, serene, and cheerful, in 
the midst of dangers, thick-set on every side, with his faith 
in the power of the Gospel never weakened, not when tried 
for his life on the charge of being a malignant sorcerer ; not 
w^hen he sees a musket aimed at his heart by a skulking 
savage ; not when he wakes up in the morning to find a 
bloody tomahawk driven into the door of his cottage, possibly 
the cottage now in danger of sinking to a baser use than 

Caesar dead and turned to clay, 
Stopping a hole to keep the wind away. 

One can see the patient missionary, skillfully, prayerfully 
instructing those dull, indolent savages, by word and by 
example, in the peaceful arts of plowing and sowing and 
reaping and grafting and weaving and building and read- 
ing and writing. One can see him holding back those fierce 
warriors, when they were panting like bloodhounds in the 
leash to league with the forces of England, and exterminate 
our infant settlements in central New York. 

In the still hours of the night one can see him in his cot- 
tage writing long letters on religious subjects to good men in 
London and Boston, and other long letters, on political and 
educational matters, to men highest in national and state 
authority — to President Washington, to General Knox, to 
Alexander Hamilton, and to George Clinton. When weary 



148 OLD GREEK 

with writing, one can see him kneel by his bedside, and 
gather new strength where he had taught his dusky converts 
to find it, by " talking with the Great Spirit." 

One can see him with his bright children about him, one 
of whom was to be a graduate of Dartmouth ; another the 
first wife of the greatest Biblical scholar of America, Edward 
Robinson ; a third the mother of his gifted biographer, Samuel 
Kirkland Lothrop ; a fourth most eminent among the sons and 
presidents of Harvard College. 

One can see the dignity and gracious simplicity that en- 
noble the hospitalities of his narrow home, when he receives 
frequent calls from the Chieftain Skenandoa; from James 
Dean, the fearless interpreter; from Kunkepot and Onon- 
dego and Samson Occum, the Indian orators; and those 
most memorable visits from Governor Clinton and Baron 
Steuben ; from Timothy Dwight and Jeremiah Day, after 
their long ride on horseback from Yale College. 

One can see him laying out and maturing his plans and 
benefactions for a new seat of Christian learning, that shall 
be to New York what Harvard and Yale and Dartmouth 
then were to New England : an eminent means of diffusing 
useful knowledge, of enlarging the bounds of human hap- 
piness. 

When one sees all this, and other such sights, is it strange 
if that weather-beaten, unpainted cottage at the foot of the 
hill, with its crumbling chimneys, swells into a sacred pile, 
with something of the grandeur and hallowed inspiration 
of an old cathedral? 

Is it strange, if I sometimes dream that cottage will one 
day be transferred to the choicest spot on the college cam- 
pus, and roofed over with a spacious pavilion, and that in 
it will be collected the letters which the good missionary 
wrote and received ; the Bible and the books that he loved 
to read ; the bloody tomahawk that was driven into the door 
of his cottage ; the old Puritan musket that refused to go off, 
when aimed at his heart by a skulking Indian ; the chair 
that he sat in when he received a visit from President Tim- 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 



149 



othy Dwight and Tutor Jeremiah Day, who came all the way 
on horseback from Yale College ; the chair that his wife sat 
in when she taught the alphabet to the coming president of 
Harvard ; with portraits of himself and President Wheelock, 
his preceptor, of Skenandoa, who sleeps beside him in the 
college cemetery, of James Dean, the heroic interpreter, of 
Kunkepot and Onondego, the Indian braves, of his tried 
friends, Baron Steuben, Doctor Backus, and Doctor Norton ; 
and lastly, that deed of trust giving three hundred acres for 
the beginning of Hamilton College. These, it seems to me, 
will be a fitting monument to " The Memory of Samuel 
Kirkland." 

With the name of Dominie Kirkland is always as- 
sociated that of Skenandoa, the Christian chieftain of 
the Oneida Indians. One of the earliest of Doctor 
North's poems, delivered before the Alpha Delta Phi 
fraternity, was a fine tribute to the character and ser- 
vices of this remarkable man. Several extracts from this 
poem are here reproduced : 

Skenandoa 

[A poem pronounced at the Anniversary of the Alpha Delta Phi Society 
of Hamilton College, July, 1843.] 

A blind and garrulous old man, his name 

Tradition, far removed from noisy towns, 

That put on airs and flaunt ambitious hues, 

Lives in a cavern weird and shadowy ; 

And leaning on his staff, rehearses tales 

Of wild adventure in those former years. 

When Superstition, by the hearths of rude 

Simplicity, nurst shivering Dismay. 

With pious care, Historians gather up 

The sibyl leaves that stray from that weird cave. 

And build them into books. And Orators 

Go there to borrow those strange sorcerous spells, 

Which linger in the spirit's haunted ear, 



ISO OLD GREEK 

Like voices in the shell. Shy children climb 

The knees of that blind, garrulous old man, 

And vex him for recitals, such as freeze 

The blood in infant veins, of deadly fray, 

And visits of white ghosts. But most of all. 

Conceited children of the tuneful craft, 

Imagine that unearthly eloquence 

Lurks in his language, and it yields them joy 

To seize its echoes, as they roam about 

In that weird cave, and weave them into song. 

Often beside the weary plow at noon, 

And the good evening fire, is mention made 

Of Skenandoa. It was his gladness, years 

Ago, with plumed tiara clad, to breathe 

The lusty air of the Oneida hills. 

In moccasins of curious workmanship 

He trod the warpath with a kingly step, 

That awed his dusky liegemen, and disdained 

A meaner sealing of his royalty 

Than that which conscious prowess and felt worth 

Imprint on noble brow. The pleasant homes. 

Where our intrepid sires have planted vines. 

And reared tall trees, beneath whose murmuring boughs 

Unscared by dreams of Rapine, we repose, 

Look upward to the same far sky, which stooped 

To clasp within its blue embrace the broad 

Dominions of his tribe. 

That gallant tribe 
Is gone. Through its long graveyard, mournfully, 
As if bereavement made them heavy, move 
Those streams, upon whose margins Enterprise, 
That can persuade the elements to earn 
Its wealth, hath summoned into busy life 
The hum of spindles, and the clang of looms 

Innumerous. 

The Sagamore had roamed 
The woods until they knew his voice. His step 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 15 1 

Had grown as wonted to the tangled passages 
Of swamps, where daylight never came, 
As is a weaver's shuttle to its path. 
He had run races, when a black haired boy, 
Before his maiden war club had received 
The nick of his first battle, with the swift 
Oriskany ; had bathed him in its tide ; 
Been led by it, when lost, as by a clew, 
Until his bent ear caught the distant ring 
Of the samp-pestle at his bark-built home, 
And after years had nurtured in his breast 
A solemn love, born of the boy's wild whim, 
For its low music. 

At length undaunted Kirkland came and reared 
God's altar in the woods. The savage raised 
His hands and stared in mute astonishment. 
The mild instructor stood alone, yet strong 
In faith ; unarmed yet fearless. The good news 
Of the Atoning Word stole welcomely 
To those fine chords of sympathy which long 
Had rusted in the Sachem's heart, and woke 
Supremest rapture. From his eyehds fell 
The seals of darkness, wretchedness, and guilt, 
The hallowed fight of a soft morning bathed 
His spirit, which the dews of penitence 
Had moistened, and to his rapt sense revealed 
A world so freshly beautiful it seemed 
A new creation. Those stern quahties 
Which made the warrior terrible, were merged 
In love j and in the room of that serene 
Contempt, which sat throned on his rigid lip 
Was seen the smile of a believer's hope. 
As if it were a metaphor of peace. 

How like vast billows, yearning for the moon. 
Are the fierce passions of the natural heart 1 



152 OLD GREEK 

Each with its fellow waging sullen war, 
And all combined to work the general ill. 
Yet when the example of a holy Hfe 
Comes with its blessed influence they cease 
Their conflict and, like heaving tides, reach up 
To clasp the Pure, the Lovely, the Serene ! 

Thus lived the Sagamore, a stalwart elm 
Hugging the soil that gave it nourishment, 
And therewithal content : that asked no hymn 
At morn's approach, or twilight's dewy hour 
Sweeter than that which the red hangbird trilled 
From its suspended nest, through lattices 
Of leaves that fidgeted on their slight stems ; 
That pined for no exotic fragrances. 
So long as wild forgetmenots, that loved 
Its shade, with a sweet bashful gratitude, 
Turned up their eyes. 

Time hurried on, and shook 
The moments from his wing. The stalwart elm 
Grew old. The tempests of an hundred years 
Had whistled through its branches, and it fell 
Prostrate and broken. 

Near those trysting walls, 
Where Science and Religion meet and kiss 
Each other, and within that precinct, where 
Remembrance goes to mourn the Piety, 
The Eloquence, the Learning that expired 
With Backus, Maynard, Norton, sleeps the dust 
Of Skenandoa. 

He left no wealth to bribe 
The turgid chisel. Yet the memory 
Of his endearing character survives 
In marble. By indecent haste his grave 
Is never trampled. Thither, as the sun 
Drops down the western sky, prone shadows creep 
On noiseless knees, like pilgrims, travel worn. 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 153 

And longing to behold their prophet's tomb, 
Ere life goes out. 

The stranger, as he bends 
Him o'er the spot, with lowly daisies prankt, 
And reads, in his unboastful epitaph. 
The record of a sainted Sachem's life, 
Admires how one, who sleeps so peacefully, 
Could rouse, with summons of his tocsin voice, 
His Hegemen from their lairs, with quivered backs, 
Or bid them slink to lazy dreams again 
With but a gesture. 

Death strikes not to please 
A whim, nor are his doings meaningless. 
The truest lessons that we learn of Life 
Come from the speaking silence of the Grave. 
Then veil thy text, fond scholar, and awhile 
Forget the hoarded wisdom of the schools. 
Why shouldst thou delve forever in the shaft 
Of dark and sunken Ages, with the lamp 
Of thy Ht genius on thy brow, for those 
Dim pagan truths, which, when dragged forth to light, 
Only result in demonstrated doubt? 
Come home, pale Roamer from the shadowy Realm 
Of Dream and Fable, through its ivory gate. 
And kneel by the hushed grave of Skenandoa. 

The turf is fragrant with embalmed Rebuke : 
And by the memory of a true Hfe, 
A life which ghded to its final rest. 
With no rude snapping of the silver cord, 
And went to heaven, as the still dew goes up, 
When it hath told its errand to the flower. 
Let those strong aspirations it were sin 
To quench and madness to abuse, be warmed 
With holier zeal ; and learn a higher aim 
Than the astute Philosophy, which walked 
The groves of Academus, ever dreamed. 
There learn, with what sublimest joy the heart 



154 OLD GREEK 

Is filled, when it hath starved the brutal Lust, 
And crushed the proud Disdain, and bowed itself 
At Jesus's feet, as humble as a child. 

The Stagirite was cunning, and had wit : 

But the bruised heart, that well nigh broke with grief, 

Vainly implored his creed for medicine. 

Beside the passion of the bleeding Cross, 

The veil of his hypocrisy is rent 

In twain, and in the blaze of Gospel Truth, 

His learned bubbles are ashamed to live. 

What is Ambition, but a Sisyphus 

Forever tugging at the impending rock 

Of its great agony? Could it but win 

A glorious name, and carve it deep and large 

On the high pillars of Eternity, 

How gladly would it hug the hottest bed 

In Hell, and deem it but a rosy couch ! 

Yet, from the bosom of the grave, a voice 
Whispers : That glory shall go out in night. 
Which borrows not its luster from the skies ; 
That friendship is a fooHsh moment's whim. 
Which hath no hope to be renewed in heaven. 
Just when the Dream hath built its house, and made 
It cool with fountains leaping to the lip, 
Just when the Toil hath harvested its sheaves 
Of plenty, and invited in its guests. 
Just when Desire hath won its bride, and wove 
Its wedding garment, and perfumed its bed, 
Then comes the Dread Intruder, with a grip 
Of ice, and leads away his prisoner. 
Clinton, July, 1843. 

A third among these Christianized Indians, whose 
names are so closely associated with the early history 
of the college, was Samson Occum ; and the following 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 155 

letter tells what Doctor North sought to do to perpetu- 
ate his memory : 

Hamilton College, October 5, 1880. 

My dear Sir : I send you the report of a unique memorial 
service on Paris hill, in which you may possibly feel an 
interest. You will not blame me, if I think of you among 
all the distinguished sons of Oneida county, as the one from 
whom the gift of a monument to Samson Occum would be 
most appropriate and most graceful. All the more appropri- 
ate and graceful would be such a gift because you are most 
familiar with the history of the Brothertown Indians, and 
would be looked to as the one best fitted to tell the story of 
Samson Cecum's wonderful career. The cost and style of 
such a monument should be left to the taste of its donor. 
The feeling that something should be done in this matter so 
constantly oppresses me that I shall have no peace of mind 
until I have made this appeal to your generous sympathy. 
Kirkland and Skenandoa and Backus have their monuments 
side by side ; but no inscription in marble or granite rescues 
the name of Samson Occum from "dumb forgetfulness." 
Must it be so always ? 

With the highest esteem, 

Yours very truly, 

E.N. 

Next after Dominie Kirkland, Doctor North was in- 
terested in the traditions of Doctor Azel Backus, the first 
president of Hamilton College. Some of these traditions 
he was tempted to perpetuate in rhyme ; and the best of 
these rhymes was the *' Bacchanal Ballad," written for 
the semicentennial anniversary of the college : 

A Bacchanal Ballad 

Air — Litoria 

I 

Prex Backus was a jovial Prex, 
The roughest, kindest of his sex. 



156 OLD GREEK 

His lips let fly full many a joke, 
And jests he woke that others spoke. 

II 

One night he caught a freshman tight, 
And helped him home, with wrath and might ! 
In other words, a freshman drunk 
He shouldered, like a traveler's trunk. 

Ill 
The freshman's plucky Mater wit 
Gave back this saucy, saving hit, 
" O quo me, Bacche, plenum te: 
O magne Prex, quo rapis meV^ 

IV 

When the tired teacher shuts his book, 
When pastors rest, by hook or crook. 
When city bankers seek to know 
A bank whereon wild violets grow ; 



When doctors, lawyers, editors. 
Would sharpen up their ancient saws, 
When half a century's uncorked wit 
Floods the gay board where brothers sit ; 

VI 

And drunk with frolic, titled men 
Grow back to college boys again, 
Then good Prex Backus's jovial soul 
Fills up for each the brimming bowl ; 

VII 

Each mother's son grasps by the hand 
And wrings from each the old demand, 
" O quo me, Bacche, plenum te : 
O magne Prex, quo rapis meV 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 157 

Here is another skit in humorous verse, prompted by 
traditions of President Backus : 

President Backus 's Spectacles 

[Note. — Many years ago a pair of iron spectacles was received 
from an aged citizen of Clinton, one who had known Dominie Kirk- 
land, Moses Foote, Doctor Norton, Doctor Seth Hastings, and Doc- 
tor Backus. He declared that these spectacles were worn by Doctor 
Backus, when he preached the sermon at the funeral of Skenan- 
doa, in the old church on the village green. These spectacles 
seem to be made of magnetic iron. They thrill the blood of 
one who holds them. They have furnished a text for a contribu- 
tion to the " Hamiltonian." In the early days of the college, morning 
prayers were held before breakfast, and in winter time the chapel was 
lighted — though dimly lighted — with homemade tallow candles.] 



" Helps to see must be seen to," quoth President Backus. 
" To read his own Latin would pose Poet Flaccus, 
With eyes blurred like mine from smudge of damp fuel. 
(That load of green basswood was atrociously cruel :) 
Reading Paul's fervid Greek by dim candle ray, 
At 6.30 A.M., on a bleak winter's day, 
To freshmen uncombed, half-dressed, and frost-bitten, 
Gives worship the blues and devotion the mitten." 

II 

Helps to read must be had, and where is the bold smith 
With boldness enough ? Where the silversmith, goldsmith. 
Where the blacksmith, or tinsmith, plumber, or glazier, 
With courage and skill for the president's pleasure ? 
College Hill is astir, and with winking and humming, 
The tall poplar trees wonder what now is coming. 
The Spectacles come. They are built on the square : 
No scrimping of iron or enterprise there. 
All the curves have the true Grecian bend, to a hair. 
The lenses are wrought into well-polished faces, 
And with beeswax cement are kept in their places. 



158 OLD GREEK 

The rivets are solid ; the hinges are pliant, 

And the tout ensemble^ a trifle defiant, 

Gives the orthodox look for philosophy's giant. 

Ill 

The spectacles come, with their double commission 
To sharpen and lengthen the president's vision. 
No prouder when arms for Achilles he brought, 
Was Vulcan of old than the blacksmith who wrought 
These wonderful helps for eyesight defective. 
Had they saddled the nose of a New York detective 
Long since he had dragged by his aftermath hair 
The millionaire thief from his innermost lair, 
Unless Justice forgot art's bright luminary, 
That genius was laureled "A. M. Honorary." 

IV 

A committee of two — all the class of fourteen — 
The first class and smallest our Mother has seen -^ 
Seek the president's study, and solemnly pray, 
" Please excuse us from speaking commencement day." 
The president peers thro' his spectacles slyly. 
And smiles his consent with a joke thrown in dryly, 
" A pair of bright lights shirk their mission to shine, 
Yet your prayer is allowed both for your sakes and mine, 
Lest your dear Alma Mater should look like the dickens, 
A fussy old hen scratching round for two chickens." 



With slow shuffling gait of orang-outang, 

A senior wit brings his chapel harangue. 

" Would President Backus the matter review 

And please let him know will the pleasantries do." 

After wiping his glasses the president read 

Jokes old as the mummies and equally dead. 

Then he cleared his throat to mildly remark, 

" These four-footed puns must have come from Noah's ark. 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 159 

Attic salt I enjoy, when the article's pure, 
But Joe Miller shad-brine I cannot endure.'* 

VI 

Helps to read we all need, both in earnest and joke, 

Helps to read what was clear when the president spoke ; 

Helps to wear with his grace the garlands of beauty 

That wait to reward valiant doers of duty. 

Had we eyes to discern the heritage fair 

So largely and brightly revealed to his prayer ; 

Could we see as he saw pure rivers of healing 

Flow out from the fount of Kirkland's unsealing, 

Could we read with him sweet charity's lore 

On the grass-grown grave of the brave Skenandoa, 

How his homespun raiment, transformed to our eyes, 

Would glow with a light from the bending skies. 

And our hearts would burn with a love all divine 

As we walked with our guide from the olden time I 

This letter to the late Hon. Gerrit Smith recalls 
another service which Doctor North rendered to the 
memory of Doctor Backus : 

Hamilton College, April 22, 1872. 
Hon. Gerrit Smith, LL.D. 

My dear Sir : I reached CUnton last week, after an ab- 
sence of eight months in Europe. One of my first walks was 
to our college cemetery, where I always find some good 
inspiration. 

I was pained to see that the monument to President Backus 
is falling to pieces. It is a cheap and hollow structure, made 
of thin marble slabs. If it were durable, it would be wholly 
unfit to stand by the grave of a man whose solid greatness 
can only be symbolized by solid stone. How shall this 
wrong to the memory of our first and greatest president be 
righted? The college is so needy that the grave of its 
founder, Dominie Kirkland, is still without an epitaph in 



l6o OLD GREEK 

marble. The monument to President Davis was erected by 
his son, Hon. Thomas T. Davis. It is massive, costly, and 
permanent. 

The monuments to Doctor Noyes and Professor Catlin were 
erected by their executors. You see whither I am drifting ? 
I write to ask if you could make a worthier use of $500 or 
$1,000 than to perpetuate the memory of Doctor Backus in 
marble or granite ? The inscriptions on the marble slabs 
now broken and crumbling are very appropriate, and these 
could be transferred to the new monument. Then all who 
visit the cemetery would be spared the pain of seeing in the 
Backus monument a crumbling satire on the Scriptural prom- 
ise that "The righteous shall be in everlasting remem- 
brance." 

If I seem to be rude or intrusive in what I suggest, I beg 
you to forgive me, and place it to the account of my reverence 
for one of the few immortal names that were not born to 
die. 

With the highest esteem, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Edward North. 

Another anecdote regarding President Backus ap- 
pears in a history of the homes on College Hill, which 
Doctor North wrote for the Irving Club. The history of 
the old president's house, still standing on the campus, 
is preserved in this record : 

History of the President's House 

The first president's house has seen more changes, and 
' — if it had a tongue — could reveal more secrets of domestic 
life than any other on College Hill. Until the year 1853, it 
stood opposite Professor Root's, where it was probably erected 
as a boarding hall for students, previous to the chartering of 
the college. Doctor Azel Backus was inaugurated December 
3, 181 2, and sometime during the next year his family took 
possession of this house. Here his only daughter was 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE i6l 

wooed and won by Gerrit Smith. As it belongs to the com- 
mon law of Clinton never to speak of Doctor Backus without 
repeating one of his memorable sayings, here is the place 
for an anecdote, never yet printed, that will illustrate one of 
his housekeeping experiences. One of the farmers living 
westward from the college brought down a load of green 
basswood, on a cold, nipping morning, and invited Doctor 
Backus to make a purchase for his fireside. The sticks were 
all straight, carefully split, snugly packed on the sled, and with 
their white insides turned out, made a goodly sight to an eye 
as green as the basswood. Doctor Backus asked what kind 
of wood it was. The farmer, thinking it all right to quibble 
with so learned a man, said it was " Not walnut." " Not 
walnut," echoed the Doctor ; " that is a kind of wood I never 
heard of in Connecticut. But it looks very well, and I will 
give it a trial." The basswood was unloaded, and paid for. 
The next morning when the fires were started at five o'clock, 
the president's mansion was suddenly converted into an orna- 
mental smokehouse ; and Doctor Backus may have wept 
some of those tears, of which he once said, " There is no 
religion in them." Meeting the woodseller a few days later, he 
said to him, " Neighbor, couldn't you bring me a couple of 
cords more of that ' not walnut ' ? " " Not walnut, ah ? " said 
the farmer, a little puzzled, " you like that kind of wood, 
then? " "Why, yes," said the Doctor, "I like it for some 
purposes. It's a good thing in its place. If I had two or 
three cords, I think I could put out hell fire with it." 

* * * Doctor Backus died in 1816, and in 181 7 his mantle 
fell upon Doctor Henry Davis, whose physical, intellectual, 
and social characteristics formed a striking antithesis to those 
of the first President. Built like an Englishman, Doctor Backus 
was bluff, brusque, and brawny. Doctor Davis was a leaning 
tower of Pisa; slender, courteous, and the owner of more 
strength of purpose, more power of making resistance than 
a chance acquaintance would be apt to suspect. * * * 

In 1833 Doctor Davis resigned the presidency and retired 
to that convenient hermitage " over the gulf," which had been 



l62 OLD GREEK 

built by the Western Education Society, as a boarding hall 
for its beneficiaries. It was a capital mistake for the officers 
of the Education Society, whoever they were, to board their 
candidates for the ministry, apart from other students, in a 
place that came to be ignominious ly known as " Charity hall." 
Thus managed, the society lost favor with the public ; fell 
into debt, and its property was sold at auction for $500, 
about the time Doctor Davis retired from the presidential 
mansion. 

Doctor Sereno E. Dwight, a man of brilliant gifts, came 
in 1833, and boarded for two years in the president's house 
with Mr. H. G. Buttrick. Doctor Joseph Penney came in 
1835, and for four years the president's house was a center of 
generous and refined hospitahty. Professor John Finley 
Smith's brief enjoyment of wedded life was under this roof in 
1841-1842. Professor Mandeville had his home here for 
eight years. Here he elaborated the system of elocution 
that brought glory to his name and great advantage to the 
college. 

Doctor Mandeville was succeeded by Professor James R. 
Boyd in 1850, and in 1853 the curators of the college 
grounds gave the order, " Westward, march ! " and the 
president's house obeyed. By its removal to another local- 
ity, it lost much of its dignity and historical prestige ; but it 
sheltered Doctor Fisher's family during seven years of his 
eventful presidency, and with it are associated the far-reach- 
ing plans and brave efforts of a master worker, who gave a 
vigorous impulse to the growth of the college. 

* * * " Happy is the people whose annals are dull." Apart 
from the activity and occasional excitements created by the 
presence of students, the annals of College Hill are full of 
the dull narcotism that belongs to a peaceful and happy com- 
munity. No traditions are told of fire, or flood, or burglary, 
or drunken violence. No barroom tempts the young. The 
nearest approach to a barroom was a queer something called 
a "buttery," kept in the basement of Commons hall, sixty 
years ago, with its temptations limited to raisins, nuts, beer, 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 163 

and cider. One of the keepers of this college buttery was 
Stephen W. Taylor, valedictorian of the class of 18 17, after- 
wards president of Madison University, father of Benjamin 
F. Taylor, author of " The River of Time." 

* * * A semidaily walk up and down the hill has a rhetori- 
cal potency. It gives the indispensable sanitary basis for 
effective elocution. It gives the discipline that made Demos- 
thenes strong winded, clear headed, and heroic in eloquence. 
With its complete freedom from malaria, the atmosphere of 
the hill is a dry and wholesome tonic. It commends itself 
nimbly and sweetly to the senses. It is a slander to say 
that the temperature of the hill is unusually changeable. 
Its thermometers unite in testifying, that in extremes of heat 
and cold, the mercury rises five degrees higher and sinks five 
degrees lower on the banks of the Oriskany than on the hill- 
side.^ 

******* 

Amid gradual changes which have taken place so noise- 
lessly that they make no impression upon us, until the look 
reaches backward over a decade of years, throughout this 
silent lapse of three quarters of a century, the college itself 
remains unchanged in its loyalty to the grand purpose of its 
founder. Students come and go in regular succession ; 
teachers are called away by other interests or by death ; 
families are gathered and broken up ; seedtime and harvest 
and winter follow each other, but the college stands, with 
its eternal youth consecrated to " aid the reign of virtue and 
the kingdom of the Blessed Redeemer." 

His regard for tradition underlay Doctor North's 
profound interest in the celebration of the semicenten- 

1 Doctor North's opinion of the Clinton climate is shown in the two entries 
from his journal which follow : 

" Our northern winter has its list of blessings. It brings a time to remem- 
ber the poor ; and a time to enjoy the plants in the window ; a time to repent 
of the sins of the summer ; a time to repair the parsonage ; a time to read 
Whittier's ' Snow Bound ' ; a time to thank God for the shifting drama of our 
beautiful seasons." 

" Clinton is as beautiful in her summer loveliness as she is ugly in her winter 
repulsiveness." 



l64 OLD GREEK 

nial anniversary of the college in 1862. His journals 
reveal the days and nights of anxious and enthusiastic 
labor which he devoted to the preparations for that 
event ; they show also that the whole burden of editing, 
publishing, and paying for the memorial volume which 
records the proceedings fell upon his shoulders. 

Part and parcel of his love for the traditions of the 
college was Doctor North's intense affection for its 
surroundings ; the buildings, the campus, the trees 
which he had helped Doctor Root to plant, were all 
dear to him. Somewhere in his writings he spoke of 
them in this wise : 

In describing the royal parks which he saw on the march 
to Babylon, Xenophon used the Persian word TrapaSeto-os, a 
word that would not misrepresent the summer surroundings 
of Hamilton College. 

It hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto the gentle senses. 

To be intimate for four years with the shifting delights and 
constant inspiration of a broad landscape like that bounded 
by Paris hill on the east and the more distant Trenton range 
on the north, is itself a liberal culture to one who loves the 
beautiful. Plato's academy was a grove of olives, and the 
sons of Hamilton find philosophy's best nutriment in the open 
volume of nature. Their daily walks are skirted with trees 
and shrubs of every name that can bear the winters of central 
New York. Each class plants its memorial tree with festive 
addresses, and calls itself the elm class, the oak class, the 
hickory, or the magnolia class, according to its chosen 
emblem. 

These reminiscences of Hamilton from the pen of 
Doctor North close with a whimsical tribute to Alma 
Mater, in his best vein of humor : 



REMINISCENCES OF THE COLLEGE 165 

A Tribute to Alma Mater 

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe, 

She had so many children she knew not what to do, 

She had hundreds of hearty, invincible boys. 

Far out in the world, and weaned from their toys. 

Making money and fame, while lengthening the cords, 

Of church and of state with their eloquent words. 

At home she had Seniors, all quick with oration ; 

And Juniors impatient to startle the nation ; 

Belligerent Sophs, giving Fresh tribulation. 

And filling her shoe with wild perturbation ; 

While she sounded the depths of self-abnegation. 

These stout boys at home, a turbulent crew. 

Plagued the soul of the Dame who lived in a shoe, 

They plagued her at night with bonfires and horning, 

They plagued her with " fizzles " and "bolts" in the morning. 

What with breaking of doors and windows and benches, 

Her patience was tried with such violent wrenches, 

Once a year she forgot what her tongue was about, 

And uttered D.D.'s with the dashes left out. 

Who can wonder the Dame had no end of surprises, 
That gifts so sublime should wear such disguises, 
That high-soaring boys their ballooning should ballast 
With names from a language deader than Sallust. 
Her children were hungry as colts out of clover. 
They clamored for dinner ere breakfast was over. 
She gave them some broth, and of bread all she had ; 
Thick broth for the good, thin broth for the bad. 
Broth seasoned with conies and classical manna, 
With logic and lectures and chemistryana, 
With prizes and medals and sheepskin diplomas, 
Pledging Latin renown more lasting than Homer's. 

Then she whipped them all round, for duty was first, 
That great-hearted Dame, her heart ready to burst. 



l66 OLD GREEK 

She whipped them with fines, called " extra contingent," 
And six-shooter " warnings," remorselessly stringent. 
When whipping produced but a slight titillation, 
She spanked them at last with a sound " dissertation." 
Then she sent them to bed in those snug, breezy stalls 
Named " Kirkland," and " Dexter," and " Hamilton " halls. 

All hail to the Dame so plucky and true. 
Who gives every inch of her pinching old shoe, 
Every sip of her broth, of her bread every roll, 
To the wide-awake boys that worry her soul. 
All hail to the Dame, whose voice on the Hill 
Makes her sons to survey thought's kingdom at will, 
And arms them to wield, in their glad, golden youth, 
Ithuriel's spear and the falchion of Truth. 
Then crown Alma Mater with honors forever. 
Let her plenty and peace flow deep like a river, 
Let her names be all sweet, Homeric and tender, 
Bright-throned, silver-footed, fair Learning's defender. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TEACHER 

A Teacher of Teachers — The Class Farewells and the 
Professor's Responses — His Methods of Instruction — 
Cramming — The Class Lectures — Conditions of Suc- 
cessful Teaching ~ The Seven Lamps of the Teacher — 
The Teacher's Sources of Power. 

It was as a teacher that Edward North left the 
impress of his character most strongly upon the con- 
stantly changing community in which he lived and 
worked. The purpose of this chapter is to make 
record of the sources of his power in the classroom 
and over the individual student. There are hundreds 
of professors in our American colleges as earnest, as 
enthusiastic, and as successful in their work as was 
Doctor North. There are many among them more 
widely known in the world of science, of literature, and 
of scholarship. There are none whose lives reveal a 
longer service of undeviating fidelity and of constantly 
augmenting personal influence. There are none who 
have left behind them a fuller account of the sources 
of a teacher's power, as revealed by their own experi- 
ence or evolved from their own conception of the dig- 
nity and the possibilities of the profession. Whatever 
value this volume may possess to the teachers of the 
country is imparted by Doctor North's abundant delinea- 
tions of the sources of the teacher's power, the inspira- 
tions to his endeavor, and the elements of his success. 

167 



1 68 OLD GREEK 

Doctor North was a great teacher; but as a teacher 
he was greatest in teaching others how to teach, how to 
make the most of their opportunities and to impart the 
greatest usefulness to their profession. In this respect 
his influence will longest survive, and his service to 
education be most enduring. 

If we look about among the world's educators to find 
the best type of teacher with whom to compare Doctor 
North, we shall find him in a combination of Doctor 
Thomas Arnold of Rugby and his eldest son Matthew. 
Doctor North possessed the scholarship and the indus- 
try, the passionate love for his work, the constant search 
for higher standards for the guidance of students, and 
the personal traits which distinguished the head master 
of Rugby as a teacher. Professor Finley says of Doctor 
Arnold, that " The final value to be set on Arnold's Ufe 
is in the example of a thoroughly righteous man, a picture 
of sincerity and truth ; a man, also, who was not content 
to be righteous for himself, but was inflamed with zeal in 
the cause of righteousness," ^ and this is equally true of 
Doctor North. The influence of Doctor North's charac- 
ter and of his methods of teaching was equally potent, in 
his more limited field, in shaping the character of his 
pupils. But he also possessed what Doctor Arnold 
lacked — certain mental qualities which have made Mat- 
thew Arnold a power in the world of letters. Like the 
latter. Doctor North was unusually gifted in the use of 
the English language ; there was a singular charm about 
his methods of expression. He was a poet of no mean 
order, and he possessed a rare critical instinct which he 
exercised with a delicate and playful humor all his own. 
Through the agency of these gifts. Doctor North won 
the admiration of his pupils, and this cemented his influ- 
ence over them. The chapters which precede and fol- 

1 J. J. Finley, " Arnold of Rugby," Cambridge, 1897. 



THE TEACHER 1 69 

low indicate certain other qualities which, while they 
bore no direct relationship to his success as a teacher, 
were important factors in contributing to it. His schol- 
arship commanded the admiration of his pupils ; his 
enthusiasm kindled their interest in the work of the 
classroom ; and his personal attitude toward the individ- 
ual student inspired to greater effort through love for 
the instructor. Undoubtedly this last was the most 
potent of all the factors in his success. The personal 
equation is the final test of success in every walk of life. 

On one occasion. Doctor North put into words his 
feeling toward the college boy : " I am sometimes 
accused of being too much in sympathy with the 
troublesome college boy. I frankly acknowledge that 
atrocious crime, and propose to be a sinner to the end 
of the chapter, for I find no place for repentance. The 
college boy is a problem we have been trying to solve 
for about two and a half centuries in this country ; and 
if any progress has been made toward the solution, it is 
by the men who have had the wit to see that the college 
boy can be reached and shaped and saved most surely 
through his social instincts. Science and literature are 
of small worth, without the elements of friendship, of 
sympathy, of confidence, of cooperation, between teacher 
and pupil." 

He knew better than most teachers "when to look, 
and when to see nothing," as some one has said of 
Arnold. He could discriminate, instinctively and 
sympathetically, between harmless fun and innocent 
jollity on the one hand, and vicious and depraved dis- 
order on the other. He could share in the one, but he 
could set the seal of his righteous indignation unerringly 
upon the other. All this the boys came to know and to 
understand ; and so they felt that they had in him a 
personal friend. They found in the classroom a pro- 



I/O OLD GREEK 

fessor who was not at all averse to a joke — whether 
made by himself or by a student. Laughter was not 
tabooed in his exercises, but rather encouraged ; and if 
the laughter was at his expense, it was felt that the time 
would not be long before it would be adroitly turned 
upon the class as a whole, or some member of it.^ But 
it must be good, genuine wit, and not mere brutal vul- 
garity, which could interrupt for a moment the orderly 
progress of a class exercise. Perhaps the distinction 
between the two is hard to preserve ; and at all events 
it is a dangerous liberty for a college professor to allow. 
It was only possible in Doctor North's case, because he 
never permitted any encroachment beyond the border 
line of propriety ; and the boys knew him so well that 
they never attempted it. Probably not one professor in 
a thousand could venture on such delicate ground with a 
class of college boys. With Doctor North it was never 
even dangerous. He was always in perfect tune and 
touch with the class ; and if any individual member 
attempted to take advantage of the situation, the whole 
body was instantly on the side of the professor. 

Something of the depth and the genuineness of this 
student feeling toward the professor was boisterously 
and ardently expressed in a student poem which ap- 
peared in one of the college periodicals on the occasion 
of Doctor North's resignation, and which is reproduced 
here as conveying in the most effective way the feeling 
of the boys for their professor : 

Every mother's son stand up, 
Send around the loving cup ; 

1 In one of his diaries appears the following entry : " Doctor preached 

in the college chapel. He was very angry because the students laughed when 
he closed a rhetorical climax with the word 'fresh,' It was one of those unex- 
pected turns to which students always respond, and how can we blame them ? 
Yet Doctor chose to regard it as an insult, and refused to attend the even- 
ing prayer meeting, nursing his wrath at Professor 's house." 



THE TEACHER 171 

Old or young we are all his boys, 
Tell him so with a joyful noise — 
Old Greek ! 

Seven and fifty summers he 
Shook the boughs of the Attic tree. 

All that he knows he'll never tell ; 

Give him another Hamilton yell — 
Old Greek ! 

'37, that was the year 

Kat yap was a freshman here ; 
Long has he plodded the upward trail, 
The way he has blazed shall never fail, 
Old Greek ! 

Fifteen hundred men alive, 

All the A.B.'s in the hive ; 
Fill him with honey up to the brim ; 
He knows us all, and we all know him — 
Old Greek ! 

Gray and grizzled, full fourscore, 

Just the Prof, he was of yore ; 
The boys come in and the men go forth, 
But there never is but one Edward North — 
Old Greek! 

Relations of personal intimacy thus sprang up be- 
tween the professor and the entire class — relations 
strengthened and continued outside the classroom, 
and in the hospitable study at " Halfwayup," where 
every student knew a welcome awaited him, and 
whither they turned with their troubles, their hopes, 
and their ambitions, always to find a friend and a 
sympathizer. 

In the later years of his service there grew up the 
practice, on the day of his last meeting with the juniors 
— the day on which he read to them the lecture on the 



1/2 OLD GREEK 

" Old Greek Lexicon " — for some member of the class 
to rise and bid the Greek professor a formal and affec- 
tionate farewell. In his diaries are several references 
to these occasions, which reveal how deeply they touched 
him : 

March 28, 1877. — The snow was deep, and kept growing 
deeper from morn to night. Heard the freshmen in Homer. 
Read a farewell lecture to the juniors. After the lecture 
E. W. Lyttle, one of the juniors, made a pleasant address, 
suited to the close of the Greek curriculum. He expressed 
the satisfaction of the class with the quality and method of 
instruction received in Greek, and said many flattering things. 
A brief reply was made to this unexpected address, and with 
three cheers and a Hamilton tiger, the class of '78 ended 
their Greek study, with a pledge of loyalty to the "Old 
Greek Lexicon." 

March 27, i8'j8. — Heard the freshmen in Homer. Read 
a farewell lecture to the forty juniors at 10.45. -^^ the close 
of the lecture, James W. Morey, in behalf of his classmates, 
made a very pleasant and graceful farewell address, and at 
its close proposed three cheers and a tiger for the Greek 
Professor. To this a response was made that was most 
kindly received, and another class was sent forward to higher 
studies. I have never had to do with a better class. 

March 25, ^8yg. — Read a parting lecture to the juniors 
at 10.45. Charles A. Gardiner, representing the class of '80, 
made an address, in which many pleasant and complimentary 
things were said. Replied briefly, as well as I could. Then 
three rousing cheers were given, with a tiger. It is the 
thirty-fifth junior class from which I have parted, and each 
year the parting brings warmer expressions of generous and 
hearty friendliness. 

March 20, 1883. — Read a closing lecture to the juniors. 
After the lecture a parting address was made by John A. 
Dalzell, who in the name of his classmates presented a gold- 
headed cane inscribed with the class motto, etc. 



THE TEACHER 1 73 

Among his papers were found the notes of several of 
the responses of the professor to these farewell words 
from the class. Here is one of these addresses, and 
the professor's reply : 

Professor North : There is one more exercise before the 
class of '84 passes from its last recitation in Greek. Another 
year has rolled around, and another class stands ready to 
bid you farewell. Customary as it is on occasions like this 
to say pleasant things, I know I but feebly voice the senti- 
ments of this class when I say that it has always been with 
pleasure that we have entered your recitation ; and not a 
single unpleasant circumstance has ever occurred there. 
Dealing gently with our blunders and mistakes, you have 
led us through the complications of Greek structure and 
given to all of us strength in the mastery of the Greek 
language. 

Your lectures, as eminently the one of this morning, have 
interested and instructed us. Your zeal and devotion for 
the college and the work have summoned our best efforts. 
By your felicitous touch you have made delightful what is 
usually dry and irksome. By your profound scholarship you 
have inspired in us a respect such as seldom exists between 
professor and student. 

And now in behalf of this class I present you with this 
cane, not for the intrinsic worth of the article, but that when 
you look upon it or chance to use it, you may think kindly 
of the class of '84 and of the loving feeling that goes out 
towards you from every man of us, adding the hope that 
many active years may yet be before you ; that succeeding 
sons of Hamilton may reap the benefits of your instruction. 

To which the professor responded : 

Many things are wonderful : nothing is more wonderful 
than the ^schylean astuteness and the Sophoclean large- 
heartedness of junior Greekists in selecting a memorial gift 
for one who has lived so long on Greek that it will never be 



174 OLD GREEK 

melted out of him, or frozen out of him. I thank you most 
heartily for your generosity. Yet it really was not called for. 
I shall not forget the Greekists in the class of '84. We have 
spent so many pleasant hours together, have untwisted to- 
gether so many hidden ties of choral harmony, and I have 
so many large hopes invested, that I shall be sure to remem- 
ber you with a friendly watchful interest so long as I 
remember anything. 

Sometimes these farewells were put into rhyme. 
This was his response on one of these occasions ; 

The Greek We Leave Behind Us 

With gladness and sadness we sever forever 

The stout Greekish bonds that so long have linked us, 

And leave it to others, with clever endeavor, 
To unrivet the chains of Prometheus Vinctus. 

And this his farewell toast to the class of '91 : 

When '91-sters reach the year of 19 41, 

May many grandsons grace the groves of Hamilton I 

When the farewell meeting of the class of '91 came, 
the fiftieth anniversary of his own graduation suggested 
to Doctor North some thoughts that stirred deeper than 
usual; and he spoke to the boys these solemn and 
memorable words : 

On a former occasion I mentioned the fact that the gradua- 
tion of this class will be fifty years after the graduation of my 
own class. That is a long stretch of years that separates the 
class of '91 from the class of '41. While we are so far apart 
in our years of graduation, I trust there is no untruthful ex- 
travagance in saying that we have kept near to each other 
in friendly sympathy, near to each other in our loving study 
of the Greek masterpieces, near to each other in loyalty to 
our common college mother. 



THE TEACHER 1 75 

In so far as the parting words of this morning are personal, 
I shall not try to express the gratitude, which I certainly feel 
most deeply. After parting with forty-four classes in the study 
of Greek, one comes to the forty-fifth parting with something 
Hke a cumulative regret. If it is the last straw that breaks 
the camel's back, it is the last recitation that breaks the 
teacher's heart, if he be a true and worthy teacher. Hence- 
forth we are friends and fellow-explorers in the vast fields of 
Greek scholarship. If you have disappointments hereafter, 
be sure they are mine as well as yours. Whatever honors 
you may win in the future, they are to be mine as well as 
yours. Yours to bear the burden of, mine to enjoy, so long 
as I live to enjoy anything. And of all possible honors, be 
sure that none are more to be desired than honors gathered 
in the path of the just, which shineth more and more unto the 
perfect day. 

The second secret of Doctor North's success as a 
teacher sprang from his methods. It was his constant 
study to interest the students in their work. With this 
end in view he adopted many unusual methods of vary- 
ing the monotony of the classroom. He was a great 
believer in the blackboard, as an aid to the class in 
deciphering the intricacies of Greek grammar and syn- 
tax. He encouraged the students to regular attendance 
even if they were not prepared to recite. Here is a 
remark he used regularly to make to each succeeding 
class : 

I am grateful for the full attendance this morning, and 
would be also grateful for a full attendance at each morn- 
ing recitation. The habit of regular attendance at every 
duty is a good habit to cultivate, and worth all the effort it 
may cost. It is a habit that will bring dividends after 
graduation. Even if one is not prepared to recite, it is 
far better to be at the post of duty, and thus to keep in 
touch with the daily progress of our work. 



1/6 OLD GREEK 

He encouraged his students to depend upon their 
memory, rather than upon notes, in reporting his 
lectures. 

This morning's lecture is presented for an exercise in 
reporting from memory. In former years the better results 
have been secured in reporting, when the reports were made 
from memory, rather than from elaborate notes. The taking 
of notes is a mechanical process, that is a distraction to close 
undivided attention, and often hinders more than it helps. 
A report from memory should be made at once, before 
impressions have been wiped out or obscured by other 
intellectual efforts. These reports should be correctly writ- 
ten and returned not later than next Monday. Credit will 
be given for these reports according to their deserving. 

He varied the method of instruction, and it will be 
interesting to other teachers of the classics to learn some 
of his methods in this respect. They are revealed by 
these extracts from his diaries : 

May 23, i8y8. — Heard the freshmen read the entire 6th 
book of the Odyssey as a narrative exercise. Yesterday ten 
lines were assigned to each member of the class. To-day 
each freshman was called upon to read his ten lines, with- 
out scanning. No questions were asked in syntax, and only 
a few corrections were made. It seemed to be a popular ex- 
ercise. It may be worth repeating, occasionally, by way of 
variety, and for a fair sample of Homer's narrative skill. 

January 15, 188 1, — Heard the juniors in Sophocles. A 
new feature was inaugurated in the classroom. Two 
juniors, the first in the catalogue, were called to trans- 
late the advance Greek for the next recitation. They had 
notice of this call yesterday, and the next two juniors were 
notified of a similar call at the next recitation. No criticism 
is to be given on these prelections, unless in the case of a 
serious error that may lead others astray. One grows more 
and more in love with teaching as he hits upon new methods 
of deepening and quickening the interest of a class. 



THE TEACHER 1 77 

March 10, 1881. — Heard the juniors recite from the 
CEdipus Tyrannus without the use of any text-book. The 
recitation included two strophes and two antistrophes, which 
had been memorized. The juniors called out repeated the 
Greek, and gave formulae for scanning, gave translations, 
and analyzed sentences and words. 

February 14, 1883. — Made a second experiment with the 
class in reading Greek at sight, and was greatly pleased with 
the results. To each three or four juniors, three or four 
lines were assigned, and three pages were recited during 
the hour. By giving a single sentence to one student, for 
which he is alone responsible, the task is made more attrac- 
tive, and all are deeply interested. 

Doctor North's general theory of classroom work 
differed radically from that wrhich ordinarily obtains 
among college professors. He believed in leading 
rather than in driving his pupils. By some of his 
associates he was sometimes thought to be too lenient 
in dealing with his classes; but he was well content, 
in reply to such criticism, to point to results. He 
sought a golden mean between overforcing the student 
and allowing him too much leeway. He believed that 
the teacher should be "a leader and a guide, not a 
driver with whip and spur." 

In an informal address before a body of local school- 
teachers, he once described his whole philosophy of 
teaching, in a discussion of the evil commonly known 
as "cramming," which leaves its vicious trail on the 
educational systems of most of our American colleges 
and universities. It sums up the experience of fifty years 
of observation and experiment : 

Cramming 

A friendly letter received last week from a college graduate 
of very high rank in personal and professional work, asserts 



178 OLD GREEK 

that colleges ought to provide a remedy for what is called 
cramming. The evil that goes by this name is so seriously 
hurtful to moral and intellectual character, that no effort 
should be spared to find out and apply the remedy. As 
cramming at the dinner table results in dyspepsia, paralysis, 
Bright's disease, and death, so cramming at the study may 
lead to insanity, dementia, and all the ills that intellect is heir 
to. Cramming is feeding the mind with ten or twenty meals 
at once, and so overloading its powers that they give up in 
despair, and utterly refuse to undertake the work of assimila- 
tion and digestion. 

What specific remedy can be found for this great evil ? 
To give up examinations because cramming is sometimes 
resorted to in preparing for examination, has been seriously 
proposed, but this remedy is like giving up regular meals to 
keep clear of gluttony, and the glutton's penalties. What we 
need is a system of daily study and daily recitation that shall 
remove all temptation and motive for cramming. This 
would give us the only specific remedy that is worth con- 
sidering. 

If a teacher would put an end to cramming, he will see to 
it that the regular e very-day tasks assigned to his classes are 
suited to the average ability of his students, and that the 
work of each day is thoroughly mastered. A skillful teacher 
will be a leader and a guide, not a driver with whip and 
spur. He will be very careful not to lay burdens on younger 
intellects which he is unwilling to shoulder himself. He 
will be independent of his text-book, and have opinions of 
his own which he is ready to support with good and sufficient 
reasons. * * * 

Cramming for examination can be most effectively 
prevented, as it should be prevented, by frequent reviews 
that shall give to each daily exercise all the significance and 
value of an examination. The evils of cramming are impos- 
sible in the case of students who realize that they are liable 
any day to be tested on their knowledge of any previous 
exercise, when each recitation is conducted on the theory 



THE TEACHER 1 79 

that each foregone recitation has been thoroughly mastered 
by all in the class. 

The golden fruits that gladden the eye in autumn orchards 
have not gained their tempting ripeness in a single day of 
shower and sunshine, nor will the tree of knowledge ripen its 
richest fruits without repeated ministrations from all the 
kindly aids of conversation, illustration, explanation, applica- 
tion. Thought gains strength and confidence by frequent 
expression. Thought once delivered is the world possessed. 

Teaching we learn and giving we regain. It takes time to 
do all this, and time is the stuff that life is made of. No 
better use can be made of life than to convert it into wisdom. 
If a student falls into an error, time would be saved by 
simply correcting the error and then passing on to something 
else. But that would not be teaching. It would be simply 
dogmatism, and dogmatism is as bad as cramming. If the 
student's attention is called to a principle that enables him 
to see his mistake and make his own correction, he is thereby 
strengthened in self-respect and independence, and he is 
helped to become a genuine thinker and scholar. The 
teacher is fully authorized in thus taking time to teach, by 
remembering that he is teaching not for time alone but for 
eternity. 

Cramming is overloading the memory with undigested 
materials for impossible thinking. But the proper and 
legitimate functions of the memory ought not to be neglected. 
One who is to live the life of a thinker and an intellectual 
worker needs a trained and trusty memory, a memory that 
can carry great burdens and be loyal to its duty in vital 
emergencies. Next in importance to the power of thinking 
on the legs, in the face of contradiction, is the power of say- 
ing open sesame to vast treasures of hoarded wisdom. 

All science is based on accurate definitions, that embody 
the results of the world's best thinking, in each department 
of study. Accepted definitions should be permanently lodged 
in the memory, with their lamps trimmed and burning. The 
same may be said of choice aphorisms and extracts from 



l8o OLD GREEK 

classic writers, ancient and modern, that embody vital and 
imperishable truths. 

The chief instrumentality through which Doctor North 
sought to vary the monotony of the classroom, and to 
enlarge the vision of his students beyond the pages of 
the text-book, was the lecture. A record in one of his 
diaries indicates that he planned to deliver twelve 
lectures a year to each class. On these occasions the 
classroom was always full; and these lectures are 
remembered by the alumni as among the most enjoyable 
and instructive of their college experiences. Several of 
these classroom lectures are preserved in this volume. 
Some were read to twenty or thirty classes, as indicated 
by the record of dates attached to the manuscript. 
Others were read only once or twice. Evidently these 
latter did not please him, either in topic or in treatment, or 
in the manner of their reception by the students. It was 
his practice to constantly rewrite parts of these lectures ; 
and some of the manuscripts are composites difficult to 
symmetrically rearrange, the changing handwriting in- 
dicating that parts of them were written or rewritten 
forty years apart. 

The third secret of Doctor North's success as a 
teacher was his enthusiasm in his work, or his devotion 
to teaching for the love of teaching. This enthusiasm 
he had the singular power of imparting to his students. 
In his "Memoirs of Yale Life and Men," Doctor Timo- 
thy Dwight pays a tribute to another famous Greek in- 
structor, Professor James Hadley, which might have been 
written with equal truth of Doctor North : " Professor 
Hadley contributed largely through his personal in- 
fluence, as well as through his teaching, to the develop- 
ment of the true life of the academic community. He 
appeared before his students as a genuine and almost 



THE TEACHER l8l 

ideal scholar, and his every presentation of himself had 
a certain stimulative force in the awakening of their 
mental energies and the exciting of their best desires 
for knowledge and culture." 

Doctor North left certain memoranda which fully 
explain his own theory of the requisites for success as a 
teacher. Here is one, which names the four conditions 
essential to success in teaching : 

1. Knowledge and aptness to teaching. 

2. Self-control. 

3. Sympathy with the young. 

4. Enthusiasm. 

Here is another, in which he enumerates the stimu- 
lants to study on the part of the student; and it is 
worthy of note that in the order of their importance he 
regarded love for the teacher as the first : 

1. Love for the teacher. 

2. Love of knowledge for its own sake. 

3. Love for the rewards of knowledge : honor, prizes, etc. 

4. Fear of degradation and punishment. 

These memoranda are extended and elaborated in 
another, the concluding section of an address before a 
teacher's association, in which Doctor North described 
what he called ** The Seven Lamps of the Teacher," 
that " give brightness and glory to a toilsome path of 
duty." There is not to be found in literature a more 
inspiring creed for the teacher : 

The Seven Lamps of the Teacher 

But after all, gentlemen, you and I know that state patronage 
and colleges and institutes and books are all impotent to pro- 
duce a single successful teacher, without good material to begin 
with, and a conscientious purpose to magnify the teacher's office. 
Iron sharpeneth iron, but soft dull lead can neither hold nor 



1 82 OLD GREEK 

give a polish or an edge. There are Seven Lamps of Teaching 
that give brightness and glory to a toilsome path of duty ; that 
quicken the birth of flowers and richest fruits, to take the place 
of gloom and barrenness. 

1. There is the Lamp of Knowledge. The teacher should 
have a thorough knowledge of that in which he undertakes to 
give instruction. He should be a positive character, compe- 
tent to do his own thinking independently, and not a tame 
enclitic in the syntax of society. He should scorn to be in 
bondage to a text-book. Least of all will he try to Hve without 
books. They must furnish the food on which his intellect 
grows and renews its vigor. Books he will use as ministers to 
his hunger for knowledge. He will gratefully use them as prod- 
ucts of human skill ; as auriferous quartz to be crushed and 
forced to surrender whatever of pure ore they contain. 

2. There is the Lamp of Law and Order. There must be 
fidelity in the observance of all necessary regulations. Nor is 
it to be forgotten that in a school, as in a state, " that govern- 
ment is the best which governs the least." A teacher whose 
heart is in his work, will make his own hfe an inspiring example 
of loyalty to law. He will know how to secure good order and 
studiousness not so much by loud demonstrations of authority, 
as by an unseen, quiet magnetism that captivates all hearts and 
wins them to studious and orderly habits. Like Livy's Evander, 
he will control his pupils less by official power than by personal 
influence and " fair allurements to learning." 

Jeremy Bentham's doctrine in regard to the enforcement of 
civil law is still more truthful when apphed to the discipline 
of a school. " Government ought not to do everything by force. 
It is only the body which submits to that. Nothing but wisdom 
can extend its empire over the mind. When a government 
orders, it but gives its subjects an artificial interest to obey. 
When it enlightens, it gives them an interior motive, the influ- 
ence of which they cannot resist." 

3. There is the Lamp of Patience. The duties of the 
teacher ought never to be discharged in a hurried, careless, 
or petulant manner. He should feel that he presides over 



THE TEACHER 1 83 

vital processes that call for the utmost watchfulness and pa- 
tience. He should sit Hke a refiner of silver, gazing intently on 
the precious ore in the crucible, and be always vigilant to keep 
away each evil influence and to eliminate each grosser element. 
To make known truth by a simple, straightforward statement 
may be the easiest way for the teacher, but not always the best 
way for the pupil. Ideas that come without research and cost 
but little of time and labor in the getting are apt to take as 
little time in the leaving. Ideas that cost severity of thinking 
become embedded in the mind, grow to be a part of its substance, 
and are as prompt to obey the owner's will as are the muscles 
of the hand. In place of being hurriedly and transiently re- 
corded, as with a walking stick on the tide-washed shore, they 
are graven as with a chisel on everlasting granite. This patient 
mode of instruction is in keeping with the meaning of the word 
education, which is a drawing out and a development of what is 
within, rather than a mechanical pouring in of ideas from 
without. 

4. There is the Lamp of History. This throws its light 
backward, and reveals sources of strength and comfort and 
guiding inspiration in the lives of great, good teachers gone 
before ; in the kindly, searching severity of Socrates, to whom 
the hearts of his pupils were like the leaves of an open book ; 
in the fair humanities of the poet Archias, with a Cicero by his 
side, to twine his brow with grateful laurels ; in the contagious 
enthusiasm of quaint Roger Ascham, the tutor of Princess 
Elizabeth, who read with her Cicero and Livy, Plato and 
Sophocles, and the Greek Testament ; in the vast learning of 
John Milton, whose outward blindness only sharpened and 
purified his inner vision ; in the moral and intellectual noble- 
ness of Thomas Arnold, who was a great schoolmaster, because 
he was a great man, whose pupils loved him with all the joy of 
like-minded brothers, chastened by the reverence of obedient 
children. Nor can it be out of keeping to find an illustration 
of the teacher's power nearer home, in the useful, uneventful 
life of a man Hke David Prentice, whose fifty years of whole- 
hearted consecration to classical teaching were partly given to 



1 84 OLD GREEK 

the youth of this city, who left abiding impressions on many 
of the best intellects of our state, and whose last years were 
sweetened by receiving a generous annuity from a few of his 
early pupils — two of them distinguished residents of this 
neighborhood, after they had gained professional and political 
eminence. 

5. There is the Lamp of Prophecy. This throws its light 
forward and helps the teacher to forecast a good career for 
his pupils. It helps him to shape the future success and char- 
acter of the man. It should be a part of the teacher's creed 
that every boy is good for something ; that his duty is to find 
out in what pursuit he is best fitted to succeed ; to help each 
pupil to make the most of himself and his native gifts ; to 
wake up and encourage what is good in his nature ; to furnish 
nutriment and stimulus for his finer powers ; and to lead him 
forward by kindly incitement to the dignities of a genuine 
manhood. 

6. There is the Lamp of Enthusiasm. One has no business 
to be a teacher, unless his heart is in his work, so that he will 
do it lovingly and with his best faculties fully enlisted. If a 
teacher goes to his work as a criminal would go to the pillory ; 
if his daily routine of duty is a weary treadmill, and never en- 
nobled by flashes of hearty enthusiasm ; if there is always a 
feeling of distance and dislike between himself and his pupils ; 
if in moments of confidence when they would come near to 
him, and speak to him of their griefs and pleasures and plans, 
an invisible wall of ice suddenly represses them ; if he is so 
irritated and exasperated by outbursts of innocent froHc that 
he has a bulldog's chronic hunger for fight : of such a belli- 
gerent teacher it is safe to say that his properer place would 
be in the regular army with a rifle on his shoulder. 

7. Finally, there is the blessed Lamp of Christ's Example, 
to guide the meek in judgment, to illumine what is dark in the 
ways of Providence. No failure need be feared for the well- 
trained, well-furnished, and patient intellect that looks for help 
to the Supreme Teacher ; that reverently accepts the Bible as 
its guidebook to the only knowledge that can satisfy and save 



THE TEACHER 1 85 

the soul j that lovingly and prayerfully leads the way to that 
highest wisdom, whose beginning is the fear of the Lord ; whose 
paths are pleasantness and peace ; whose end is life eternal.^ 

Doctor North did what he could by pen and by 
example to dignify and ennoble the profession of the 
teacher. In his view, the teacher, instead of holding 
a makeshift position, good enough to keep the wolf from 
the door while looking about for some better opportunity 
to get a start in the world, was already at the point 
of greatest opportunity for good. He never missed a 
chance to exalt and to glorify the mission of the teacher. 
The extracts which follow are illustrative of this feeling 
on his part : 

Teaching 

The genuine teacher is also an uncommissioned prophet, 
and if he holds his position long enough to read the fulfillment 
of his predictions, he reaps a reward of skilled fidelity which 
he alone can fully appreciate. To witness the struggles from 
day to day of a youthful, vigorous, aspiring intellect over the 
tangled perplexities of Demosthenes, or Sophocles, or Plato, 
is to read intimations of the coming orator or author; and 
when these prophecies are fulfilled, the teacher enjoys an 
addition to his salary which trustees can neither bestow nor 
withhold. Thanks to the men of broad and generous culture 
in fifty-seven classes who have taught us 

How to make our lives sublime, 

And departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time. 

******* 

If there is truth in the apothegm first put into Greek by 
Thucydides that history is philosophy teaching by examples, 
it must be equally true that the philosophy of teaching may 
be learned from examples of teachers who have honored or 
dishonored their chosen calling. Looking back through the 

1 Address before the Oneida County School Commissioners. 



1 86 OLD GREEK 

long vista of sixty busy years, the teachers of distant schooldays 
stand out in vivid prominence that distance cannot obscure. 
As the years slip away, and life becomes more and more a 
reminiscence, each day's experience brings new regret for 
the teacher who betrayed his trust, and new gratitude for 
the teacher who was true. * * * 

It is now fifteen years since I first became a college instructor, 
yet I never look upon a collection of youth engaged in studi- 
ous pursuits without throwing my thoughts forward, and feeling 
that I am in the presence of power, wisdom, and eloquence. 
Coming events cast their shadows before. In this case the 
shadows are tinged with bright and cheerful hues. I can 
sympathize with the enthusiasm of John Trebonius, one of the 
instructors of Martin Luther, who, according to D'Aubigne, 
never entered his schoolroom without Hfting his cap to salute 
his pupils. In those pedantic times this was looked upon as 
an excessive condescension. It pleased the boys, but it offended 
the men. Some of the friends of Trebonius took him to task 
for treating his pupils with such civiHty. His reply to their 
censure is worth remembering : " There are those in my 
school whom God will one day make burgomasters, chancellors, 
doctors, and magistrates. Although they are not yet seen with 
the badges of their dignity, it is right to treat them with re- 
spect." Such a remark should teach young men to respect 
themselves ; to see to it that no one shall hereafter speak ill 
of their youthful days ; to prepare now, in their golden school- 
boy days, to quit themselves like men — men of wisdom and 
conscience — in whatever position they may be called to 
occupy. * * * 

You have all heard of that famous Greek artist who had such 
skill in the practice of his art that the deluded, keen-sighted 
birds were attracted to his studio by a cluster of grapes which 
he had represented on canvas. You remember how the rich 
and powerful, following the example of the birds, came to 
express their reverence for this wonderful artist ; how they 
brought such abundant rewards for his creative skill, that Zeuxis 
was surrounded with all the luxuries and pomps that ingenuity 



THE TEACHER 1 8/ 

could suggest and wealth procure. You remember the little 
anecdote told in the Greek reader, about a jealous rival who 
once found fault with Zeuxis because he spent so much time 
upon his paintings, and never seemed to know when they were 
done ; because he was so slow to execute his orders, and had 
so many last Httle touches to add, when the money was waiting, 
and his patrons were ^ngry with his delay. Zeuxis's reply — so 
prompt and memorable — to this captious criticism you can 
not have forgotten, most certainly not, if it ever fell to your 
schoolboy lot to dig it out of the original Greek, '^ I take time 
to paint, and I paint for eternity." 

There is a good sermon for teachers in the sentiment and 
spirit of this reply. The teacher is — or ought to be — an 
artist, not a mere mechanic. He is an artist in the very highest 
meaning of the word. He has to do, not with dead colors, or 
cold, lifeless stone, but with throbbing, warm hearts and with 
immortal souls. I shall not then be thought to have misunder- 
stood the purpose of this meeting, if I try to bring it home to 
the conscience of every teacher present, that it is not less his 
duty than his interest, to " take time to teach, and to teach for 
eternity." 

Is THE Teacher's Life Worth Living? 

The thoughts and suggestions now before us might be 
framed into an answer to the question, " Is the teacher's life 
worth living ? " It rests mainly with the teacher himself to 
determine whether his pay shall be anything beyond the wages 
named in his contract. If he choose, he can teach for $8 a 
week, and grumble to his heart's content. Or he can teach 
for rewards that scorn to be reckoned in dollars and cents, and 
have food for the heart that the world knows nothing of. There 
is no good reason for belitthng the amenities and dignities that 
wait on skillful and conscientious teaching. No calling can be 
named that holds out higher incentives to unselfish eifort and 
fidelity. 

There is no calling in which industry, learning, skill, persever- 
ance, and generous character can count on returns more sure and 



1 88 OLD GREEK 

satisfying. If there are melancholy failures, it can generally be 
seen that the pubHc should not be blamed. The lower rounds in 
the long ladder of promotion are not difficult to gain. It is 
one of the attractions of the teacher's calUng that its first 
returns are immediate, with no long period of exasperating 
uncertainty. The new graduate from school or college passes 
without delay to the control of the schoolroom, and each suc- 
cess in teaching helps to prepare the way for a higher trust. 

The teacher's days are spent with the young. As his ovm 
years increase, he learns to reckon this among his higher 
rewards. It helps him to resist the deadening influence of 
routine work. The fault will be his own, if the teacher drinks 
no elixir of life, no draught of undecay from the exhaustless 
overflow of youthful enthusiasm that surrounds him. If he 
keeps clear of the dangerous ruts of a schoolroom hack, his 
own knowledge and culture and force of character will increase 
from year to year. If he shuns a wretched bondage to text- 
books, he will be himself a constant learner. By freely impart- 
ing what he knows, he will grow daily in wisdom, in self-reliance, 
in power to impress himself upon others. 

It is true, and always will be true, that few men and fewer 
women are content to be teachers for Hfe. Not less than thirty 
thousand teachers are now doing duty in the pubHc schools of 
this state. Yet next year thousands of new recruits will be 
needed. This may be a misfortune for the state, which pays 
$150,000 a year for the support of its normal schools, but for 
the individual teacher it has no unwelcome meaning. It means 
that there is always a chance for promotion. 

Admit that the teacher's career often culminates in another 
profession; admit that many of our best lawyers, preachers, 
editors, authors, physicians, were formerly teachers, that fact 
should be placed to the credit of the teacher's vocation — the 
fact that work well done in the schoolroom has opened for 
so many a door to the grandest possibilities of Hfe. If it be 
true that all the world is a stage, and all the men and women 
are players, then the schoolroom is often the place where lead- 
ing actors rehearse their parts. If there is anything in prece- 



THE TEACHER 1 89 

dents, the live teacher may be said to have the world before 
him where to choose. 

The fourth secret of Doctor North's success as a 
teacher was his ripe scholarship, and his thorough 
knov^ledge and appreciation of the Greek language and 
literature. An appreciation of his attainments in this 
field appears in the following chapter, prepared by 
Professor Edward Fitch, his successor in the Greek 
chair at Hamilton College. 

This chapter concludes with Doctor North's message 
to teachers, born of his ripe experience and prompted 
by his great heart — a message that stands unrivaled 
among his public addresses for the wisdom of its sug- 
gestions, the beauty of its language, the aptness of its 
illustrations, and its splendid outlook upon life. This 
lecture was first delivered before the New York State 
Teachers' Association in Buffalo, New York, August 2, 
1864, and subsequently several times repeated before 
smaller bodies of educators : 

The Teacher's Sources of Power 

And, after all, the great struggle of this life — as well with 
teachers as with others — is a struggle for power. That is just 
the truth, and why should not the truth be frankly owned? 
Disguise it as we may with professions of disinterest ; with well- 
turned phrases of self-denial, plausible to others and delusive to 
our own hearts, each living soul is avaricious of power. Away 
back in his secret thought is a guarded shrine where each 
one sets up a veiled image, and whispers in private litany his 
aspirations for power. 

Yet there need be no such concealment. It is divinely in- 
tended and ordained, that man should be the owner and the 
user of power. His whole nature fits him for it. Himself a 
noble piece of workmanship, in faculties infinite and cunningly 
contrived, in form and motion admirable, he was sent into this 



IQO OLD GREEK 

world on a mission of power. He was sent hither to earn the 
right to influence others ; to conquer the ability to enjoy life's 
blessings in all their fullness, and to ward off its ills. He was 
sent hither to create history, as well as to write it. Made a 
little lower than the seraph, in God's hkeness, his business 
here is to prove the likeness, by asserting his personal power, 
and by shortening the apparent distance between himself and 
his omnipotent Creator. 

God intended that every man and every woman should be a 
center of power, to which all other centers shall yield some- 
thing of deference and tribute ; from which long lines of vivid 
influence shall ray out through all time, all history, and the 
fathomless depths of eternity. The powers that belong to 
genuine manhood and womanhood are ordained of God. He 
alone is true to himself who religiously searches for all the ele- 
ments of strength that He within him and without him ; who 
appropriates to himself all the influence he honestly can, and 
then uses it for high and generous purposes. Power is mani- 
fold. In this great life struggle for its possession, there need 
be no clashing of hostile or envious weapons. Each true man 
goes into partnership with every other true man. 

While each thus doubles his capital of power, neither loses 
his individual ownership, or enjoyment, or responsibihty. 

Look at the infant in its cradle. So complete a sample of 
inarticulate helplessness, we call it not a person, but an //. 
Left alone, it would soon cry itself to death. It has hands, 
but it can not handle. It has feet, but it can not walk. It 
has lungs, but it can not talk. Its only language is a shriek 
or a wail. Yet this helpless, powerless, infantile // will grow 
up to stand before kings ; to be himself the occupant of a 
throne — that throne erected and defended by his own re- 
sources. He will learn to subjugate the elements. He will 
force the winds, the waves, the hghtnings, to do his bidding. 

He will nurse within himself a subtle energy that shall pierce 
the wide universe like light. He will subsidize to his own ad- 
vancement all history, all knowledge, all prophecy. He will 
league himself with his fellows ; fortified with the vast re- 



THE TEACHER 191 

sources of society and friendship, of science and art, his name 
shall brighten out into a symbol of strength and authority. The 
infant will become a Luther or a Washington ; a Garibaldi or 
a Grant ; a Bunyan or a Thomas Arnold ; a Horace Mann, a 
Mary Lyon, or a Francis Wayland, whose beneficent power 
will be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 

Nobody doubts that there is power in property. It is ad- 
mitted in Holy Writ and in pithy proverbs. The multitudi- 
nous hum of business proclaims that money is power. From 
the broad fields of the farmer ; from the artisan's shop ; from 
the breasts of ocean and lake, vexed with laden keels ; from the 
wild mountains, eviscerated by greedy miners, comes up the 
voice that money is a great and a coveted power. 

One can not pass the sumptuous college halls, built out of the 
careful earnings of a Stephen Girard, a Peter Cooper, or a 
Matthew Vassar, without feeling that the maker of shrewd bar- 
gains, the creator of material values, may exhibit more of genu- 
ine, unselfish heroism, and invest his name with more of 
authority, than the bold usurper, who wins empire in one battle, 
only to lose it in another. 

But I am not so fond of the refinements of irony as to dwell 
on the admitted power of property, in the presence of a body 
of teachers, most of whom may be in a few months desperately 
striving to bring the financial ends of the year within dunning 
distance of each other. 

Passing from property to personality, and looking about for 
the means of influence that lie within the teacher's reach, that 
are part and parcel of their owner, we first encounter the stout 
fact that there is power in physical health. It has been re- 
corded in a book by a shrewd analyst of womanly character 
(herself a woman), that few qualities are more captivating to 
woman, than bravery and athletic vigor. Whatever their reasons 
for prizing sound health in their natural protectors, they are 
right in their preference. If we adopt Emerson's definition that 
" character is that which makes resistance," when other things 
are equal, one who eats and sleeps and laughs heartily, is a 
teacher of more character and more power in the schoolroom 



192 OLD GREEK 

than the one whose doctor's bill is bigger than his butcher's 
bill. He can stand up longer, and exhibit more pluck in face 
of bolts and rebellion ; " he can utter vahant noes, where timid 
dyspeptics would have spoken ruinous jv<?^j." In the inevitable 
conflicts of discipline with ignorance, disorder, and faction, 
he can hold up his own hands, without help from the Aarons 
and Hurs of a school committee. 

If need be, he can keep school till the going down of the 
sun, without regard to hunger or ventilation. To all having a 
teacher's work to do, good health is so much invested capital. 
It underlies and befriends every other personal power. Around 
it hover cheerfulness, hope, and enthusiasm. It brings confi- 
dence, patronage, troops of aUies. It puts money in the purse, 
gives spring and snap to the intellect, and braids laurels for the 
forehead. The want of health is a perpetual detriment and 
discount of power. Many a teacher has been rashly censured 
as petulant, morose, vacillating, capricious, cowardly, when 
the truer diagnosis would be that he was bilious, gouty, rheu- 
matic, asthmatic, neuralgic. 

When a fickle, pluckless teacher is said to have the spinal 
complaint, or to lack backbone, the phrase shows how quick is 
the popular mind to associate mental and physical infirmity. 
Such phrases justify the old Greeks in ranking the stalwart 
Hercules among their canonized heroes. 

While indoor gymnastics are worthy of all the attention they 
receive, as promoters of health, the teacher can find no substi- 
tute for unharnessed recreations out in the open fields, the 
woods, and the garden. Exercise taken unconsciously, without 
thinking all the time of muscles, nerves, arteries, and gastric 
juice, is what the teacher needs. We are in such weary bond- 
age through the day to headwork and heartwork, that we long 
for moments of entire freedom from thought. At times the 
intellect should be allowed to He fallow in the vacancy of cheer- 
ful outdoor amusements. 

Hard work is a monster that oppresses us ; that keeps us 
awake nights ; spoils our digestion ; turns the hair gray ; digs 
premature hollows in the cheeks ; summer- fallows the forehead j 



THE TEACHER 193 

and winter-kills the poetry of life. Hard work rides us, and 
rules us like the old man of the sea. But every now and then, 
we like to sHp away from the clutches of duty, and rush for the 
garden or the woods, as unyoked tired steers scamper off to the 
cool spring and the clover. Once out beneath the blue arch, 
where the pulse of nature can be heard to beat, we grow back 
to giddy boys and girls again. We forget schoolroom cares, 
the troublesome classes, and the indigestion. We forget the 
little duns that annoy ; the crushing calls of fault-finding com- 
mittees ; the small scandals that irritate ; and the great troubles 
that convulse the nation. We gladly exchange the heated 
drama of the schoolroom for the fairylike opera of the months. 
The fable of Antaeus is no longer a fable, when the dehcious 
smile of Mother Earth renews our youth and gives us fresh 
courage for the duties of life. 

O joy to us in such retreat, 

Immantled in ambrosial dark, 

To drink the cooler air, and mark 
The landscape winking through the heat. 



The sweep of scythe in morning dew, 

The gust that round the garden flew, 

And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! 

But the power that lifts the teacher to a high vantage 
ground, whence he can survey and control a broad field of 
action, lies in his effective skill at organizing knowledge, at 
educing principles from facts, and giving to his thoughts a 
fit and forcible expression. The difference between the sane 
man and the lunatic, the scholar and the child, is summed 
up and epitomized in the statement that the sane man and 
the scholar can organize knowledge and thought, the lunatic 
and the child can not. 

It marks a bright era in the history of popular education 
that by means of what are called object lessons, children are 
now taught how to use words with precision and accuracy as 
symbols of thought. Formerly children were allowed to fall 



194 OLD GREEK 

into habits of vague phrasing and ridiculous exaggeration. 
No effort was made to teach the right use of words and the 
golden mean of temperate, exact expression, until the pupil 
had so far advanced that his habits of speech were fixed, for 
better or for worse, and hard to be corrected. Now the very 
process of crystallization is directed by the skillful educator, 
and his pupils are taught to make their language an exact 
mirror of their ideas. 

This world of ours has many wonderful powers, but none 
more wonderful than the power that resides in words fitly 
spoken, as exponents of organized thought. The power of 
the torrent, the battle ship, the bannered army, and the steam 
engine, is a power not to be questioned or trifled with. Only 
to look at them is to feel awed and humbled by their inspir- 
ing strength. 

Not so is it with the power represented by words. When 
spoken, they are viewless, intangible, evanescent: mere per- 
cussions of the air, dying at the moment of their birth. 
When written or printed, they have the veriest look of 
innocence and feebleness ; mute strokes of the pen, tiny 
type tracks, wherein are they more significant than quail 
tracks ? What energy can they possibly put forth ? 

They wear no badges of authority, yet words are endowed 
with a power beside which the iron-clad, populous battle 
ship, the thundering torrent, the million-footed army are but 
emblems of weakness. 

Words can build up and pull down dynasties. They have 
done it. Words can half revoke the fiat of omnipotence. 
They can say to man, " Dust thou art, yet out of the dust 
I will rescue the memory of thy deeds." Words are the 
elements of history, of tragedy, and song. They are the 
brick, the stone, and the mortar, with which oratory erects its 
arches of argument, and builds its eternal pyramids of 
thought. Send your poor, worn-out words to the poet, 

And with these create he can 
Forms more real than living man, 
Nurslings of immortality. 



THE TEACHER 195 

Words give life and light to friendship and social culture ; to 
traffic and commerce ; to civilization and art. Man dies, but 
his words are deathless. They live in tradition ; in marble ; 
in books ; in their impress on society. Without them, the 
past were a blank ; the present a confusion ; the future a 

despair. 

For words are things, 

And a small drop of ink, 

Falling, like dew upon a thought, produces 

That which makes millions think. 

And these little words — so little, yet so mighty — are the 
ready tools with which the artist teacher does the work of the 
schoolroom. These everyday words, often so flippantly 
tossed hither and thither, are the sharp burin with which he 
graves on the tablets of youthful hearts, as with a pen of 
iron and the point of a diamond. 

These badges of our spiritual dignity and our elevation 
above the prone, dumb brute, that lives without speech, are 
the open sesame that gives to the teacher access to the vast 
treasures hoarded in the interior nature of his pupils. 

We have all heard somewhat of the doctrine of an apos- 
tolic succession. Whatever of skepticism there may be about 
this article of faith, there need be none about the doctrine 
of an intellectual succession, which teaches that thought 
begets thought; that mind may exert through continuous 
ages the power of impregnating and impelling mind; that 
words of wit and wisdom are reproduced in endless echoes 
along the corridors of time. 

This mysterious agency Plato likens to that of the load- 
stone, which not only attracts iron rings, but gives them the 
power of doing the thing itself does ; so that one may see a 
long series of iron rings depending, as in a chain, the one 
from the other. 

By this law of intellectual succession, Homer's thinking 
has quickened the birth of ideas and emotions in souls sepa- 
rated from him by centuries, and, it may be, ignorant that he 
ever lived. Seated in a quiet corner of a rural schoolhouse, 



196 OLD GREEK 

a wide-awake pupil takes into his soul a little thought from 
the lips of his teacher, a thought that proves a mainspring of 
righteous living, and generous endeavor, a thought that makes 
him heroic in the Senate, or the pulpit, or on the battlefield. 
The teacher's thought was suggested by Tennyson's " In 
Memoriam." 

Tennyson borrowed almost unconsciously from Goethe ; 
Goethe was indebted to Milton ; and Milton's thought was 
simply a loan from Dante ; but Dante's thought came 
straight from Virgil ; and Virgil's thought can claim a father 
in Theocritus, and grandfather in Socrates, and a great-grand- 
father in Homer, the oldest of epic singers who shuffled off 
this mortal coil more than twenty-five centuries ago. Reflect 
for a moment that each vigorous, true thought, once clothed 
with right words, and dropped into a pupil's mind, becomes 
there a deathless dynasty, the living head to an endless 
series of thoughts, the beginning to whole eternities of 
thinking, and the dignity of the teacher's office, as a user 
of words, will take to itself something like an appropriate 
realization, and put on glorified vestments. 

There is another power, closely allied to that of ideas, 
which springs from the sympathy of the thinker with his 
thought, and the worker with his work. It may be called 
the power of personal enthusiasm. Some teachers do their 
work at arm's length, as if they felt above it or hated it. As 
a class, teachers have less of professional pride, enthusiasm, 
and esprit du corps than the members of any other liberal call- 
ing. Too many have pitched their tents for temporary pur- 
poses, wishing to attract as little notice as possible to a condi- 
tion they look upon as servile and degrading. Having taken 
to teaching with no higher motive than to mend a shortness 
of funds, (alas ! for their double delusion) : these interloping 
predatory schoolkeepers, who have crawled in by some other 
way than the normal school, the academy, or the college, 
propose, at the earliest convenient season, to fold their tents 
like the Arabs, and as noiselessly steal off into some other 
vocation. Such temporary teachers can have no full sense 



THE TEACHER 1 97 

of the joys that belong to the true heroic life. We pity them 
when we see them going to their weary treadmills of hateful 
duty. We wonder in our pity what unseen scourge keeps 
them from deserting the tasks that are never quickened, or 
ennobled by a single flash of hearty enthusiasm. 

D 'Israeli tells us why we are so often saddened and sick- 
ened by the blundering inanity of teachers who have no busi- 
ness to call themselves by that sacred name. He compares 
society to a table pierced by a multitude of holes, each hole 
having a pin made to fit it exactly. But as these pins are 
stuck in hastily and without selection, chance leads to the 
most awkward mistakes. 

For how often do we see the round schoolmaster crammed 
into the three-cornered hole ! How often do we see the man 
in a teacher's chair who ought to be in a chair factory ! How 
often is an excellent seamstress spoilt to make a third-rate 
schoolmistress! As soon look for grapes upon thorns, as 
for the power of enthusiasm (which means a divinity stirring 
within) in such a tragical comedy of errors as is sometimes 
enacted, in the presence of wronged pupils, by teachers who 
are unsuccessful and unhappy, simply because they have mis- 
taken their calling. 

No man has a right to be a teacher unless his heart is in 
his work, so that he can do it with the might of enthusiasm. 
If one goes to his daily duty as a criminal would go to the 
pillory ; if there is always a feeling of distance between him- 
self and his pupils ; if, in moments of childish confidence, 
when they try to come near to him, and speak to him in 
simple phrases of their little griefs and pleasures, an invisi- 
ble wall of ice suddenly pushes them back ; if he is in the 
habit of saying or feeling that boys and girls are a nuisance ; 
if he is so irritated and exasperated by their irrepressible 
play of emotion, and outbursts of innocent frolic, that he has 
a bulldog's hunger for fight : of such a belligerent teacher it 
is safe to say that his properer place would be in the army 
with a musket on his shoulder. 

A teacher whose heart is in his work knows how to secure 



198 OLD GREEK 

good order and studiousness, not so much by open and loud 
demonstrations of authority, as by an unseen, gentle influence 
that pervades all hearts and wins them unconsciously to the 
love of himself and the duties of the schoolroom. Like Livy's 
Evander, he rules rather by personal influence than by offi- 
cial power : auctoritate magis quam imperio. You may be sure 
that he makes it his first study to gain the confidence of his 
pupils ; that he seeks to find out some chord of sympathy by 
which he can attract each little heart in his school to the 
heart of its presiding genius. 

You may be sure he is tender with the stuttering boy who 
always knows his lesson well, yet never can say it smoothly ; 
that he sometimes speaks a cheering word to the fatherless 
boy, with such great, sad eyes, whose mother is ill, and 
whose garments are threadbare ; that he heartily enjoys the 
triumphs of the ambitious boy, who takes home his books at 
night ; that the lazy, brilliant boy is gently plied with ingen- 
ious irritants to activity; and that he even extenuates the 
endless rogueries of the callow Hogarth, whose ludicrous 
caricatures have a provoking trick of getting pinned to the 
backs of his classmates. You may be sure that such a teacher 
will be all alive, and not a dead fossil. In place of sitting 
among the assembled magnates of the future, like his grand- 
father cut in basswood, he will be wide-awake and earnest. 
As iron sharpeneth iron, so the magnetism of his features 
will quicken the wits of his pupils. When the day's indoor 
work is ended, he will not think it beneath his dignity to 
play a game of ball with his pupils, or to take a stroll in 
the woods with them, or to set copies for them on the glib 
ice ; and then you may be sure the laugh strings of his coun- 
tenance will be always out, and the dry fuel of his ready wit 
will be added to the flame of their roaring merriment. 

It will be a part of his creed that every boy is good for 
something ; that never yet was an urchin born into this world 
whose work was not born with him ; and that his duty, as 
a teacher, is to discover the peculiar talent hid away some- 
where in the depths of each undeveloped character ; to wake 



THE TEACHER 1 99 

up and encourage whatsoever is good in the pupil's nature ; 
to furnish nutriment and inspiration for his finer powers ; 
and to lead him forward by kindly incitements to the digni- 
ties of a true manhood. 

This power of sympathy and friendship is none the less, 
but all the greater, because it springs from a pure, unselfish 
sentiment. No human power can be complete without the 
supplement of friends — and enemies, too, if the truth be all 
told. 

In this imperfect, disciplinary life there is a certain good 
in having what are called enemies — provided they are 
honestly come by. There is worldly wisdom as well as 
divine inspiration in the command to love your enemies. 
We can afford to love our enemies. It pays handsomely. 
Many a modest hero of the schoolroom has been helped by 
his persecutors into the chariot of public favor, and drawn 
up the rugged steeps of fame, without being so much as 
asked for a " thank you." Enemies act as a constant spur 
to industry and effort. They make the teacher vigilant, self- 
critical, self-reliant. They prevent indolence and arrogance. 
They give flavor and seasoning to expressions of praise, 
otherwise invidious and wearily monotonous. 

Aristides might have been saved from ostracism had he 
set out in his public career with a few carping gossips to 
dog his footsteps and deny that he was "Just." When we 
read of men only known to be loved, and never named but 
to be praised, don't we suspect the one fault of negativeness 
in their unruffable amiability? Can we believe they are 
straight-worded, out-acting heroes, born to beard the devil 
in his den ? 

But the blessing of enemies is liable to abuse. There is 
good in them only so long as they are witnesses to duty 
manfully discharged ; only when they are honestly come by, 
and are kept in the wrong. 

If there is good in having enemies, much more is there 
blessedness and power in friends, whose generous sympathy 
shall double all the joys of life, and divide the burden of its 



200 OLD GREEK 

sorrows. We are divinely fitted for the interchange of social 
amenities and mutual kindnesses. " How many things," says 
Bacon, " are blushing in a man's own mouth, yet graceful in 
a friend's ! " Without friendship to lean upon, we are crippled 
from the cradle. We go hobbling to the grave, to be buried 
by stranger hands, and to lie unwept and unremembered. 

We moderns flatter ourselves that we know something 
about friendship. We philosophize upon it glibly enough ; 
and in practice we almost reduce it to an exact science and 
a fine art. We make war upon home life by organizing 
clubs with reading rooms. What we call the public, or 
society at large, is but an aggregation of fraternities, brother- 
hoods, and sisterhoods, with badges, passwords, grips, and 
paraphernalia. We issue rectangular bits of ceremonious 
pasteboard, and worry through the sumptuous entertainments 
of the ball and the reception. We have no end of pleasant 
acquaintances and delightful associates. I would not speak 
harshly of them. For they seem to be an essential part of 
the nineteenth century. 

But if we are in haste to find a genuine friendship, one that 
has stood the test of fire and flood, of the rack, the gallows, 
and the calumny ; one that is an index and an instrument of 
power, it will be an easier search to go back to a century, 
when a friend was known and recognized, not by his paste- 
board, or his broadcloth, but by his life, his character, and 
his unselfish devotion to another's good. 

The lives of Socrates and Xenophon tell us something of 
the power of mutual friendship between the teacher and his 
pupil. The details of their intimacy form one of the most 
delightful chapters in the history of social and literary cul- 
ture. The whole range of modern biography has little to be 
compared with it. In the partnership of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, who spent ten years together in writing dramas, 
there is little of interest, for the reason that in literature their 
duality is hardly to be recognized. 

The case of Johnson and Boswell might be called a 
resemblance, but not a parallel. Johnson, with all his real 



THE TEACHER 201 

goodness of heart, was boorish, opinionated, overbearing. 
Though capable of unselfish and strong attachment, in his 
half-civilized way, it is doubtful if he felt it toward one 
whom he often ridiculed for a miserable Scotch toady. As 
for James Boswell, with his utter ignorance of blushing, 
either as an art or an instinct, with his everlasting stick- 
tightedness, his boundless vanity and his fathomless presump- 
tion, he would no sooner be compared with the unpretending 
author of the " Memorabilia," than would the rouge on an 
actor's cheek be mistaken for the seal of modest}^ 

Socrates and Xenophon give us the wholesome reality of 
two souls Siamesely twinned, and shrined in veritable flesh 
and blood. It must have been an honest linking of heart to 
heart, with bonds stouter than hooks of steel. There were 
no outside affinities to unite them, on the theory that birds of 
a feather seek the same perch. Xenophon was young, hand- 
some, graceful, courted, well-to-do. Socrates was poor, wrin- 
kled, with eyes glaring defiance at each other, and in other 
respects looking like a bleached contraband ; yet Xenophon 's 
sincere attachment is confessed in the conscientious exacti- 
tude with which he followed the precepts of his revered 
teacher, throughout the whole reach of his eventful career, 
keeping always before him those Socratic maxims as verily 
as if they had been graven on the palms of his hands : never 
once forgetting them, or their application to instant emergen- 
cies ; not when Treason dug pitfalls at the door of his tent ; 
not when Temptation beckoned him to pillage ; not when Frost 
and Famine, with hideous eyes, stared him in the face ; not 
when chances for grasping at empire and enormous wealth 
were thrown palpably before him ; so palpably and coaxingly 
that one not rooted in his Socratic self-control, not grounded 
in his Socratic love of integrity for its own sake, would have 
yielded as a thing of course. 

From the day when Xenophon was stopped in the streets 
by the staff of Socrates, and told to " follow and learn," his 
sincere attachment is confessed in the painstaking fidelity 
with which he attended his chosen instructor, through the 



202 OLD GREEK 

market place, the gymnasia, and the quiet olive orchards of 
the Academy ; listening to his conversations with eager, un- 
divided ears, and keeping a full and accurate diary of his 
notable sayings. Finally, after the judicial murder of Soc- 
rates, Xenophon signalized the power of friendship — both 
its subjective and its objective power — by braving the scorn 
and danger incident to the defense of an executed criminal, 
and publishing the inimitable " Memorabilia," wherein he 
dared to vindicate the memory of his slain teacher from the 
calumnies of Athenian bigotry. 

Our knowledge of the Socratic philosophy is thus a pointed 
illustration of the power of friendship. Unlike most of the 
master thinkers of his age, Socrates never aspired to the 
laurels of authorship. Genuine teacher as he was, he 
chose to act upon society at large and the distant future, 
through the friendly agency of his pupils. Drawing into his 
charmed circle the young statesmen, poets, artists, and 
social magnates of the day, he filled their souls with his 
high philosophy, and sent them forth to be its expounders, 
missionaries, and practical exemplars. Socrates must have 
had ambition — that last infirmity of noble minds — yet he 
was content to be an oral teacher, and to cast the bread of 
his ail-but inspired wisdom on the shifting waters of the age 
he lived in. 

He did this with a firm faith that through its own vitality 
and the power of friendship it would be the means of pro- 
moting right thinking and right living among his countrymen. 
Though repaid at the outset with odium, persecution, and 
death, he felt sure that the sentiments he uttered from day 
to day would insinuate themselves into the diseased and 
corrupted morals of his age, and commend the choice of 
something better than a life of mere animalism, vanity, and 
self-seeking. 

And the prophecy of his faith and hope was fully realized. 
No sooner was the light of his daily teachings and kindness 
extinguished than a chilling, remorseful darkness brooded 
over the hearts of his countrymen. Hardly was he cold 



THE TEACHER 203 

in death before his native city so far recovered its senses 
as to bewail the unsphering of its brightest luminary. It 
even tried to atone for its fatal error by rearing marble 
to the memory of its illustrious victim. 

Thus was fulfilled the calm assurance that softened for 
Socrates the agony of death: partly in the sharp sorrow- 
wakened by his loss ; partly in the tardy honor done to his 
ashes ; fully in the brimming measures of admiration and 
reverence accorded to his genius and worth as a teacher 
by thousands of later disciples who have found nutriment, 
inspiration, and delight in the " Memorabilia " of Xenophon. 

There is a lesson well worth heeding in the life of such a 
teacher as Socrates. His career speaks to us with a double 
voice ; yet the two voices are in perfect harmony. They tell 
us with all the impressiveness of an oracle how we may mag- 
nify an office second to no other in moral dignity and intrin- 
sic honorableness. The life of Socrates tells us to be earnest 
in the study of books, and to question narrowly the records 
of the past. It tells us also to act in the living present ; to 
be closely studious of society and of nature. Be it ours to 
obey each injunction ; to be alike lovers of books and lovers 
of pupils. 

The highest success in teaching is not possible to one who 
denies himself, or who is denied the aid and comfort of 
wholesome books. A large share of what contributes to 
his efficiency and permanent influence is to be found in 
books. On these his mind should be fed with as much 
care, system, and frequency as he ministers to the daily 
wants of his body. Books are always waiting to befriend 
the forsaken and faltering teacher. They bring us into 
intimate friendship with deathless sages, who instruct us 
by their wisdom, charm us by their wit, refresh us when 
weary, and sympathize with us at all times. Deprived of his 
books, the teacher may be valiant as Achilles ; but he will be 
an Achilles without the divine armor, and vulnerable at every 
point. 

At the same time, the true and conscientious teacher will 



204 OLD GREEK 

feel that one of his properest and" most profitable studies is 
boyhood and girlhood. Many a teacher has been compelled 
to give up in despair and disgust, who might have gathered 
bright laurels had he taken the trouble to make friendship 
with his pupils. There never was a teacher so strong and 
rich in intellectual resources that he could afford to incur 
the hostility of his pupils. Their friendship is needed both 
for their good and for his own comfort and for defense. 
" The sweetness of the lips increaseth knowledge," and what 
can be sweeter than words of kindness kindly received ? 

Calumny, with its hundred foul tongues, can not success- 
fully assail the good name of the teacher, whose own pupils 
are his hearty champions. The teacher's life is one of 
constant hardship, weariness, and self-restraint. He can not 
often hope to lay up wealth for old age, yet if he gives free- 
dom and generous play to his social nature, he may look to 
have that which should accompany life's sere and yellow 
leaf, " honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." 

Of such sort are the compensations of life in a world where 
abounding wrong is partially righted in ways most unlooked 
for. Even if denied a fair pecuniary recompense for his 
labor, there is a sense in which the teacher is the glad recip- 
ient of most bountiful wages. However light his purse, if he 
but win the friendship of his pupils, his heart avenges itself 
on society, and conquers a reward which he that has it can 
alone fully appreciate, a reward which higgling patrons can 
neither give nor take away. 

It is related of Cyrus that he had a general and a counselor 
in Zopyrus, whom he loved with a tenderness passing the 
love of women. One day while eating a pomegranate, Cyrus 
was asked what he would most desire to possess in number 
equal to the seeds of the fruit in his hand. He replied, with 
a pleased look towards his favorite, " I would have nothing 
but Zopyruses." In the little realm of the schoolroom the 
teacher is, or ought to be, as supreme a monarch as was 
Cyrus. Let him but take pains to win the confidence and 
friendship of his pupils, and each of them will gladly discharge 



THE TEACHER 205 

the kindly ofl&ces of a Zopyrus by lessening the perplexities 
of his daily toil, by widening the circuit of his genial sway, 
by stopping the mouths of slanderous rumor, and perpetuat- 
ing the triumphs of his professional skill. 

It is not easy to picture a social or official position more 
pitiable than that of a teacher at enmity with his pupils. To 
be at the head of a school, its acknowledged guide and con- 
troller, with the feeling that one's heart is hostile to each of 
the warm, throbbing hearts about him, suggests a perfection 
of wretchedness, painful to dwell upon. The loneliness of a 
teacher thus hating those whom he ought to love, and 
repelling those whom he ought to welcome to his kindliest 
sympathy, would be scarcely more complete or chilling if he 
were floating alone, on an iceberg, in mid ocean. His wail of 
anguish, were it allowed to be heard, would be as wild as that 
which burst from the self-poisoned soul of Byron : 

Amid the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, 
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess. 
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ; 
None that with kindred consciousness endued. 
If we were not, would seem to smile the less. 
This is to be alone ; this, this is solitude. 

Not long ago I chanced to overhear a conversation between a 
veteran teacher and one of his early pupils. It was in a railway 
train, and, though hurried and broken, was full of significance and 
food for thought. The teacher was pale, thin, gray-haired, 
and weary-looking. His pupil was plump, in vigorous health, 
and joyous. He was delighted to take his old teacher by the 
hand, and, with the freedom of a friendship unbroken by years 
of separation, to tell of his successes in life. All his plans had 
prospered. He was rapidly gaining honor and wealth ; was 
blessed with a wife and children, and talked about his good 
fortune, like a returned son at his father's fireside. Finally, with 
a voice that dropped and quavered a little, he asked if his old 
teacher was not better cared for now than he used to be, years 
ago, when he worked so hard and faithfully for a stipend quite 
insufficient and reluctantly paid. The teacher shook his head 



206 OLD GREEK 

sorrowfully, and with a sort of humiliated look, but said noth- 
ing. "What a burning shame !" was the indignant exclama- 
tion. " Why, only last week I received my chent's check for 
a single counsel fee that was larger than your entire salary for 
a year ! Yet I can truly say, as Ben Jonson piously sang of his 
revered classical instructor, Camden, 

To thee I owe 
All that I am in art, all that I know." 

Here the cars stopped ; the teacher and pupil abruptly parted, 
and I saw them no more. Yet I kept on thinking over what I 
had heard in that brief interview, and wondering if that good 
teacher's life was really hard and ill-rewarded as it seemed to 
be both to himself and his friends. At first I shared fully in 
the resentment expressed by his former pupil ; but when the 
compensations of his lot were recalled, and fairly weighed, 
there seemed much less cause for angry invective at his stinted 
salary. I thought of the hearty satisfaction that must be his 
from the remembrance of duties faithfully discharged. 

I thought of his many former pupils, now scattered up and 
down the states, holding posts of high honor and influence, 
surrounded by dependents and flatterers, yet always prompt to 
own their indebtedness to the faithful schoolmaster of other 
days, and their reverent gratitude seemed a garment of praise 
richer than robes of Tyrian dye. I thought of his unselfish 
defenses against the sorrows of age, the calumnies of hate, and 
the assaults of outrageous fortune. "Like as arrows in the 
hands of the giant, even so are the young children. Happy 
is the man that hath his quiver full of them ! " And whose 
earthly happiness can be more complete, or more stoutly 
defended than his, who can meet angry enemies as did the 
poet Archias, with a Cicero by his side to twine the green 
laurels of grateful eloquence around the brows of his early 
teacher. To be remembered by the orator, the poet, the 
historian, and to live in literature as an acknowledged, be- 
nignant power, is one of the compensations of the teacher's 
life. 



THE TEACHER 



207 



I have now named and enlarged somewhat on three or four 
of the teacher's sources of power. I have spoken of health 
and organized thought ; of enthusiasm and friendship. I make 
no separate heading for the power of religious principle, for 
the reason that reHgious principle ought to underlie and sup- 
plement every other power that the teacher puts forth. With- 
out religion, every other power has a taint of weakness, and is 
sure to fail before Hfe's battle is won. I have spoken briefly 
of property. That is a convenience, a comfort, a power ; but 
something lying outside the man. 

You can not spend your money and keep it too. Thank 
God, it is not so with the powers that make up the teacher's 
real manhood. These can not be kept without using them. 
The more we spend them, the tighter they cling to us. In 
fact, the only way to have any personal power is to use it, and 
to keep on using it. 

Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, 
And power to him who power exerts. 
Hast not thy share? On winged feet, 
Lo, it rushes thee to meet ; 
And all that nature made thine own, 
Floating in air, or pent in stone, 
Will rive the hills, will swim the sea, 
And, like thy shadow, follow thee. 



CHAPTER VIII 

GREEK SCHOLAR 

The All-round Classical Scholar of the Past — Doctor 
North's Greek Mottoes — German Influence in Modern 
Classical Study — Doctor North's Favorite Classical 
Authors — Why We Study the Classics. 

By EDWARD FITCH 
Professor of Greek, Hamilton College 

For nearly sixty years Doctor Edward North inter- 
preted to successive classes the masterpieces of Greek lit- 
erature. From the beginning Greek evidently appealed 
most strongly to his tastes. It must, however, not be 
forgotten that for the first twenty-one years of his ser- 
vice to Hamilton College he held the Dexter professor- 
ship of Latin and Greek. The field of classical 
scholarship as a whole was his care during the early 
years of his teaching. The breadth of view and of 
interest which comes from a thorough acquaintance 
with the two literatures may be seen in many of his 
utterances. There is a fine tradition which is in danger 
of being pushed aside by the intensiveness of modern 
special study, the tradition of the classical scholar who 
is at home in both literatures. To know the best that 
classical antiquity has left as its legacy to the modern 
world, and so to correlate the mass of material that the 
impression of duality shall give way to the perception 
of a higher unity, that is the ideal of the classical 
teacher's work. To Doctor North the field of classical 
study was no divided realm. Like that Nestor of Am- 

208 



GREEK SCHOLAR 209 

herst College, Professor William S. Tyler, Doctor North 
was both a Latinist and a Hellenist, familiar with the 
language and with the masterpieces of both Greeks and 
Romans. 

What is now the Curran and Hawley prize competi- 
tion, having been prior to 1865 the Kellogg prize com- 
petition, has a history that dates back to 1856. The 
papers earlier than 1864 were set by Doctor North, and 
afford a glimpse of the variety of his scholarly activity. 
The class of 1859, whose prize winner was Isaac H. 
Hall, was examined in Greek, Latin, and French. Be- 
sides literary and grammatical questions and translations 
from Theocritus and Tacitus, a page of Didot's French 
version of Theocritus was required to be rendered into 
English. Two strophes of the " Prometheus Bound " 
were given in French to be reproduced in the words 
of iEschylus, and another strophe to be rendered into 
Latin and English. A prominent feature of these early 
papers is the demand for memorizing the best passages 
of the authors studied. An Englishman, writing in a 
recent number of ** Chambers's Journal" concerning the 
" Great Teachers of my Time," has this to say about the 
method of memorizing which Doctor North emphasized : 
" Bradley at Marlborough and Doctor Percival at Rugby, 
nearly at the same time, made an identical discovery as 
regards the chief instrument of classical training. The 
writing of Latin prose had come to be regarded as the 
great test of youthful excellence. The two teachers 
just mentioned discovered that true perfection in this 
art was to be obtained less by constant practice than 
by the habitual assimilation of the best models. To 
write like Cicero and, above all, like Livy, the surest plan 
was not merely to study these authors, but copiously 
and regularly to learn them by heart." 

While there is a certain constancy in the nature of 



210 OLD GREEK 

the demands which were made upon the competitors 
in these prize examinations, yet a significant variety is 
observable. The emphasis is laid now upon Theocritus, 
now upon Demosthenes, with Greek tragedy always as 
a principal subject. Horace, De Quincey, and Victor 
Hugo are invoked as interpreters of the theory of the 
Greek drama. The papers for a series of years bear 
witness to a dominant interest in the relations of Greek 
and EngHsh poetry, both in form and in content. 
Choice passages of English verse, from Shakespeare to 
Bryant, were given to be rendered into Greek. Swin- 
burne's **Atalanta in Calydon " found in Doctor North 
a warm admirer, and inspired him to guide his students 
toward a study of the " Anglo- Attic drama " and of the 
differences between Greek and EngHsh tragedy. New 
Testament philology appears in one prize paper as a 
principal subject of study; and numismatics, geogra- 
phy, topography, and architecture claimed their share 
of attention from successive generations of ambitious 
competitors. 

A unique phase of Doctor North's scholarly work is 
the series of Greek mottoes devised for the various 
classes for more than forty years. Of these mottoes a 
record, nearly complete, is preserved in his own hand- 
writing. This work plainly made a strong appeal to his 
genius and sympathies. He possessed in a rare degree the 
gnomic gift. Writing in the " North American Review " 
of 1858 on Trench's "Proverbs," he defined a proverb 
as " always concise, and either figurative or alliterative 
or antithetic or rhymed, or in some way peculiar, so as to 
make a notch in the memory." The power of making 
"a notch in the memory" was preeminently his. Sel- 
dom does any man receive in richer measure nature's 
gift of pithy speech. These class mottoes are signifi- 
cant not more for the point and variety of the Greek 



GREEK SCHOLAR 211 

than for the appropriateness of their English garb. 
Doctor North's manuscript record of the Greek mot- 
toes begins with the class of '63, and extends, with some 
omissions, to the class of '05. Besides the mottoes 
that were actually given there are numerous sketches, 
usually in Greek but often in Latin and French, of others 
which were apparently never used. That the coinage 
of these mottoes was a work of loving care, the manu- 
script abundantly shows. In many cases a familiar 
maxim is freely rendered into Greek; often some ex- 
pression of a classical writer is used, with such modifi- 
cation as the need suggested. Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, 
the tragic poets, Demosthenes, Theocritus, and the 
Greek Testament are laid under contribution. The 
Greek form and the English renderings are here given 
as completely as the manuscript permits : 

The class of '63 : ^Lfxr) S rifjuij^ " Honor to whom 
honor." '64 : XaXeTra ra Kokd^ ** Honor is hard to 
win." '65 : 'Evop/coL koI evaTrXayx^^h " Every man a 
plucky boy." '66 : "Epja Trpo Xoycov. The class of '6y 
received the proverb which Aristophanes made familiar 
by a witty perversion : Ov Xto? aWa Kwo?, " Ten strikes 
and no failures." '68 : ^AXriOeia /col vUrj. The next 
motto that is dated belongs to '71, being the Greek 
version of John Hampden's "Vestigia nulla retror- 
sum," M7;SayLtft)9 l%woz^ ai^. '72 : ''H/Jwe? iroiovvTai 
Tjpcoa-i, " Heroes are shaped by heroes." The class of 
'73 received the saying of the Alexandrian grandam 
in the " Adoniazusae " of Theocritus : HcLpa Trdvra re- 
Xelrai, "All triumphs come by trying." '^6: Alev ape- 
arreveiVj the watchword of Homer's Glaucus, "To be 
first in worth always." 'yy : 'Oiiovola /cpaTov/xev, " By 
uniting we conquer." '78 : AvaTropcov ovSafjim '^o-o-yrea, 
"Not to be floored by difficulties." '79: Upoa-o) aei, 
" To the forefront always." '80 : *Oy Sotj/covra koI irpoa- 



212 OLD GREEK 

riicovTa, "Eighty and honors to match." '8i : 'Apery 
KoX rex^Tj, " By worth and by work." '82 : ^avelv irpo 
anixCa^, " Death before dishonor." The motto of '83, 
Tipo)Tov opOov, elra P'Cixov, " First be right, then make 
fight," was suggested by Shakespeare's 

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, 
And he but naked, though locked up in steel. 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. 

'84 : "A/oto-To? KapTTo^ vyjrc^veL, ** The best fruit hangs 
high." '85 : *E^eXoi//?70i9 6eo<; avvepyel, ** Heaven helps 
those who help themselves." '86 : 'Ni/crjv i/c/jLoxOrjTeov, 
"We mean to win." '8y: '2o<f)La to KaWLo-rov, "Wis- 
dom is the principal thing." '88 : Ovk iddvofiev ctl, 
"We aren't dead yet." '89: ''E/cao-ro? Trao-t, iravre; 
eKciaTq), "Each for all, all for each." '90: TeXo? 
aperr) Kparel, "In the long run worth wins." The fol- 
lowing memorandum accompanied the motto of '91 : 
" When Longfellow's * Hyperion ' was first published 
nearly fifty years ago, one sentence in it made an im- 
pression on the memory which years have never effaced. 
* Be bold, and be bold, but be not overbold.' In Greek 
this maxim would be : ToX/jurjaoVf fJLrjS' ayav roXfjirja-ov." 
'93 : *Ez^ Tw fjLeXXovTt ^cofjbev, '94 : 'JifjLlv evdvp.ax^lv fxe- 
Xet, "A fair fight and no favor." '95: "^Xlov aero^ 
^r)Tely " Sunward soars the eagle." '02 : M^^re fMeXcTTa 
firJTe ixiXi, " If we want a good thing we must work 
for it." '03: Alxf^i, ctperrjy 'AOrjvrj, "With steel, with 
strength, with scholarship." '05 : 'AvdyKai^ ovBa/xm 
Tjaa-ririoVy " No knuckling to difficulties." 

The mottoes given to the classes did not exhaust the 
store. Plato's proverb, Tpk ef fj rpeU kv^ol, was left 
on the stocks ready for launching in this form, " Win 
the horse or lose the saddle." One of Pindar's bold 
metaphors appears as Noi) Orjyavov vov^, " Mind's whet- 



GREEK SCHOLAR 21 3 

stone is mind." To a man who was " devoted to litera- 
ture" this motto was suggested: Et/cobz/ r^? yjrvxr]^ ol 
XoyoL, "Words are a transcript of the soul." 

Many gifted men mature so slowly that they are well 
along in the twenties before they have won their way to 
a clear perception of their proper life work. Doctor 
North belonged to the more fortunate minority whose 
vision of their true future path comes early. The biog- 
rapher of Mark Hopkins records that "at the age of 
twenty his hold on the profound principles that under- 
lie Christianity was so firm that the long deep thought 
of his later life only strengthened that hold." Doctor 
North, whose academic career offers not a few points of 
comparison with that of President Hopkins, was of like 
nature in that he found himself early. He once spoke, 
in the course of a conversation, of the somewhat aimless 
and unsatisfactory character of his youthful studies un- 
til the time came for beginning Latin and Greek ; these 
studies proved an incentive and a revelation. The boy 
then and there became conscious of a man's purpose. 

Among the many characteristic expressions which 
were often upon Doctor North's lips — expressions 
which alike conveyed his meaning and revealed himself 
— was this one that found a frequent application to the 
brilliant student, " He has a passion for Greek." The 
scholarly work of his life was not the mere external 
means of winning daily bread, nor was it like a coat 
that is put off or put on according to circumstances. It 
was no mere penchant; this, too, was one of his own 
expressions for a youthful and immature purpose. The 
Greek language and literature were the objects of a life- 
long devotion for their own sake. He loved them with 
that constancy which was the most salient feature of his 
character. " Heard the juniors make their first recita- 
tion in the 'Antigone ' of Sophocles. How one grows in 



214 OLD GREEK 

love with the glorious Greek, as years bring a deeper 
and wider knowledge of length and breadth and height 
and depth." This is an entry in Doctor North's diary 
made in 1878. Occasionally in conversation, expressions 
of admiration for the genius of the Greeks would occur, 
as full of sincerity and simplicity as they were free from 
all conventionality. Doctor North's attitude toward his 
work was through and through one of personal devo- 
tion. He was fond of referring to Macaulay's enthu- 
siasm for Greek literature. His own enthusiasm may 
well be voiced in Macaulay's words : 

I have gone back to Greek literature with a passion quite 
astonishing to myself. I have never felt anything like it. I 
was enraptured with Italian during the six months which I gave 
up to it ; and I was little less pleased with Spanish. But when 
I went back to the Greek, I felt as if I had never known before 
what intellectual enjoyment was. Oh, that wonderful people ! 
There is not one art, not one science, about which we may not 
use the same expression which Lucretius has employed about 
the victory over superstition, " Frimum Grains homo.'^ I 
think myself very fortunate in having been able to return to 
these great masters while still in the full vigor of Hfe, and when 
my taste and judgment are mature. Most people read all the 
Greek that they ever read before they are five-and-twenty. 
They never find time for such studies afterwards, till they are in 
the decline of life ; and then their knowledge of the language 
is in a great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered. 
Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people have of Greek 
literature are ideas formed while they were still very young. A 
young man, whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a 
writer as Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years 
ago. I have now been reading him with a mind accustomed 
to historical researches and to political affairs, and I am aston- 
ished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness.-^ 

1 " Macaulay's Life and Letters," by G. Otto Trevelyan, Vol. I, page 378. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 215 

Classical scholarship in America at the present time 
is strongly under the influence of Germany. Mastery 
of the modern method gives the student the power of 
reaching independent conclusions; it likewise imposes 
upon the student the duty of unresting research, even 
into fields that yield no fruit of culture. Seventy years 
ago the German influence was but beginning to be felt. 
Eager students like Woolsey and Bancroft had found 
over sea something of the inspiration of the newer 
method of studying classical antiquity; but the light 
was diffused in but few of the educational centers 
of our land. Doctor North's training antedated this 
modern period of intensive research. The traditions 
in which he was bred emphasized the humanistic aspect 
of classical study. The literatures of Greece and Rome, 
even in their incompleteness, were viewed as master- 
pieces, norms of thought and expression, priceless treas- 
uries for the enrichment of all coming generations. To 
know the best, and to know it lovingly, thoroughly, and 
for culture, was the scholar's ambition. Instinctive ap- 
preciation of the best and sedulous attention to the 
genuinely classic were the sources of Doctor North's 
power as a scholar. A good illustration is his life-long 
devotion to Theocritus. By common consent Theocritus 
is the greatest among all the poets of the Alexandrian 
period. In that modern age of antiquity, when the lit- 
erary output was so enormous and the real inspiration 
of poetry so deficient, there arose one poet who belongs 
to all time. Doctor North did not cultivate the acquain- 
tance of the learned and frigid Callimachus, nor had he 
any interest in the artificial epic or the labored didactic 
poetry of that period. His study of Theocritus showed 
whither his mind and taste led him. The only remark 
that the writer ever heard Doctor North make that was 
at all in the nature of an attempt at estimating his own 



2l6 OLD GREEK 

scholarly work, was a modest claim to originality in 
introducing the study of Theocritus into the college 
curriculum at a time when the law of supply and de- 
mand had not yet called forth a text-book by any Eng- 
lish or American author. 

The great writers whose pages he was wont to read 
and reread were his personal friends. The companion- 
ship of the honest Xenophon was never despised. Upon 
the title page of Doctor North's " Index Rerum " stood 
Xenophon's report of this sentiment of Socrates — an 
incomparable statement of the relation between good 
books and good companionship — " The treasures of the 
wise men of long ago, which they recorded in books and 
left behind, I unroll and peruse in company with my 
friends ; and if we see anything good, we choose it out, 
and we esteem it a great gain if we prove helpful to one 
another." So thoroughly was he in sympathy with the 
earnest and intense spirit of Demosthenes that he shared 
even in the orator's antipathies. '' I never liked the 
man," was his verdict upon the orations of -^schines. 
This friendship for the first of orators was the standard 
by which he measured those of lesser merit. He missed 
in Lysias the power and passion of a master spirit as 
well as the dignity and weight of a supreme occasion. 
So he did not share in the current estimate of Lysias 
as a desirable classroom author. Of Herodotus he 
used to speak as of one whom he knew and esteemed, 
yet with a gentle demur at his tendency to gossip. 

The poets were Doctor North's closest friends. To 
him Homer never became a myth. The poet's individu- 
ality was as distinct as it was to the ancient artist who 
created the Homer type in marble. The humanist's 
feeling for the grand outlines of epic unity never yielded 
to the historian's search for evidences of accretion and 
stratification. In this, as in many other respects. Doctor 



^^•"'"•[^I^J 







Edward North in the 8o's. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 217 

North was a man whose type of mind was in fullest 
sympathy with antiquity's point of view. His estimate 
of the triad of tragic poets was in many points sugges- 
tive of that of Aristophanes, and not the least in this 
that it was something more than a mere professional 
estimate. His artistic and ethical feeling found delight 
in the majesty of the inspired -^schylus. The climax 
of poetic achievement he recognized in Sophocles, the 
perfect poet, unapproached in the fine union of creative 
and artistic power. With something of Aristophanic 
conservatism and regard for the splendid traditions of 
the earlier age, he turned away from Euripides, the cos- 
mopolitan and the modern, as from one whose work in- 
dicated a declension and decadence. In estimating the 
tragic poets, Doctor North chose as one chooses an 
intimate friend, by following the leadings of congeniality. 
The significance of this feeling of congeniality for Sopho- 
cles, Sir Richard Jebb points out in these words : " The 
degree in which a modern enjoys Sophocles is not neces- 
sarily a measure of his feeling for poetry ; but it may 
fairly be taken as a measure of his sympathy with the 
finest qualities of the Athenian genius." ^ 

In one of his lectures, Doctor North finds a chief 
source of the teacher's power in his skill in organizing 
knowledge. His own scholarship was organized and 
held in trust for the use of his students. He learned 
in order to teach. He possessed in a very unusual de- 
gree the power of aptness and artistic constructiveness. 
His scholarly attainments were not mere lumber. They 
were the priceless material with which he wrought out 
fine designs. He knew facts ; but he always sought to 
know facts in their relations. Beyond the work of the 
study and the recitation room was the man himself, 
greater than any of his work, whose voice and presence 

1 " Classical Greek Poetry," page 190. 



21 8 OLD GREEK 

bore witness to the possession of scholarship vitalized 
into culture. Above all he believed with all his heart 
in the mission of the classical teacher as the trustee 
of a great legacy and the mediator of an indispensable 
culture. Like Milton, he would have the pupil intro- 
duced to a great variety of Greek and Roman authors, 
poets, philosophers, and orators, mainly that through 
these writers he might obtain access to the best thought 
and culture and so become acquainted with history and 
political science, with logic, with the principles of law 
and morals, with geometry and natural philosophy, 
with the story of heroes and statesmen, so as to " stir 
up learners with high hopes of becoming brave men and 
worthy patriots dear to God and famous to all ages." 
In like manner Thomas Arnold, while founding his 
whole educational system on the study of ancient lan- 
guages, sought mainly to use those languages as instru- 
ments for a large extension of the range of subjects 
beyond the traditional routine. ** Greek and Latin were 
to him the ttov arro), the firm earth on which he sought 
to erect a fabric in which history, poetry, philosophy, 
ethics, love of truth, and aspirations after nobleness and 
usefulness should find their due place." ^ Something of 
this ruling purpose of the scholar to make his wide 
knowledge available and to communicate his ideals to 
the student may be seen in the lecture " Why We Study 
the Classics." 

Why We Study the Classics 

In that delightful romance, Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wake- 
field," the son of its amiable hero, in describing one of his 
Bohemian adventures on the continent, anticipates a kind of 
pragmatic criticism, from the personal standpoint, with which 
some of us have grown somewhat familiar of late. 

1 Sir Joshua Fitch, "Thomas and Matthew Arnold," 1897. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 219 

''When I came to Louvain," so the narrative reads, "I was 
resolved not to go sneaking to the lower professors, but ten- 
dered my talents to the principal himself. I had admittance, 
and tendered my services as a master of the Greek language. 
The principal seemed at first to doubt my abilities ; but these 
I offered to convince him of by turning a part of any Greek 
author he should name into Latin. Finding me perfectly 
earnest in my purpose, he addressed me thus : 

" * You see me, young man. I never learned Greek, and I don't 
find that I have ever missed it. I have a doctor's cap and 
gown, without Greek. I have ten thousand florins a year, with- 
out Greek. I eat heartily, and sleep soundly, without Greek. 
In short, as I don't know the Greek, I believe there is no good 
in it.' " 

The question. Why do we study the Greek, has been a thou- 
sand times asked, and as often answered. Unfortunately it is 
one of those restless, irrepressible questions that will not long 
stay answered. Although the Greek is sometimes called a dead 
language, civilization has thus far found no churchyard where it 
can be buried beyond the hope of resurrection. 

In the progress of years, events, and institutions, in the com- 
ing and going of successive classes, teachers, commencements, 
and generations, new and importunate objectors are constantly 
pushing to the front. They present themselves jauntily armed 
with old condemned flintlocks, which in other hands have 
proved harmless, and challenge to new encounter the champions 
of classical culture. Whenever a new seat of learning is 
founded, whenever a time-honored institution is reviewed and 
criticised, it is a narrow escape, if the inquiry be not made by 
some overzealous, ungrammatical patron of science, less weighty 
with wisdom than with sudden riches, " Where's the good of 
spending so much precious time over them musty, worm-eaten 
Greek books? I have lived fifty years," boasts the ungram- 
ttiatical objector, " have made fifty thousand dollars, and been 
elected to Congress, without knowing the first syllable of your 
dead languages." 

This incessant, superficial caviling makes it necessary that 



220 OLD GREEK 

the battle should be often fought over again, for the satisfaction 
of new parties, although the victory always has been where the 
victory always must be, on the side of classical culture. 

This morning's purpose will be not to engage in any weari- 
some debate, but rather to avoid the attitude and the phrases 
of a heated partisan, while stating in plain and definite terms 
what are some of the advantages one has a right to anticipate 
from the careful, thorough, and sympathetic study of Greek and 
Latin literature. In other words, once again is to be answered 
that old, ever new question. Why are the ancient classics 
embraced in the college curriculum? 

I. The first statement to be made is, that the ancient lan- 
guages lead the way to a better understanding of our own 
language ; the ancient literatures lead the way to a better 
appreciation and a keener enjoyment of our own literature. 
A knowledge of the ancient classics throws a broad noonlight 
— never to be derived from any nearer source — upon the 
elements, the structure, the rhythms, the history, and the 
marvelous philosophy of our mother tongue. 

The author who should succeed in constructing a respectable, 
trustworthy English grammar or dictionary, without incurring a 
large debt to the Greek and Latin, must be a miracle of a 
philologist, endowed with superhuman gifts, if not a practical 
bookmaker, arrayed in pilfered plumage. 

As one who compares the bones of two unlike animals gains 
a better knowledge of the anatomy of both, so a mastery of 
Greek and Latin insures a more complete, philosophical, and 
usable knowledge of our mother tongue. It opens the way to 
the gaining of ease, courage, variety, enterprise, discrimination, 
and confidence in the handhng of English words. So often as 
one conquers a new language, he duplicates his intellectual 
resources. 

One who knows only the English language is kept in a vile 
bondage to his EngUsh dictionary. He is forever a helot, and 
never a freeman in the republic of letters. His sentences will 
betray a certain stiffness and awkwardness, a blind mechanical 
adherence to narrow rules, without knowing any reason for the 



GREEK SCHOLAR 221 

rules, with a lack of enterprise and independence in the choice 
of words and the shaping of sentences. 

We are apt to put more faith in our estimate of another's 
character, if famihar with that of his ancestors, knowing that 
personal qualities are often inherited, and that the father's 
heart, as well as his features and thumbs, sometimes reappears 
in his issue. 

The English language claims a grandmother in the Greek 
and a great-grandmother in the Latin. More than half of its 
one hundred and twenty thousand words are exotics transplanted 
from Athens and Rome. While its Saxon mother has suppHed 
the well-jointed skeleton, much of our vernacular's muscle, 
sinews, and nerve, much of its vital blood, its rounded fullness, 
coloring, and glow of ripe beauty, come to it from the exhaust- 
less treasury of Greek and Latin. 

No English author ever wrote English history with more of 
regal splendor than Lord Macaulay. In one of his published 
letters he confesses the secret of this enviable and most 
enchanting style : 

*^ During the last thirteen months I have read ^schylus 
twice j Sophocles twice ; Euripides twice ; Pindar twice ; The- 
ocritus twice ; Herodotus and Thucydides, almost all of Xeno- 
phon's works ; almost all of Plato ; Aristotle's * Politics,' and 
a good deal of his ' Organon,' besides dipping elsewhere in 
him ; the whole of Plutarch's ' Lives ' ; about half of Lucian ; 
two or three books of Athenseus ; Plautus twice ; Terence 
once ; Lucretius twice ; Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius ; Lucan, 
Livy ; Velleius Paterculus ; Sallust, Caesar, and lastly Cicero." 
This was during the year 1835, while Macaulay was writing for 
the " Edinburgh Review," and doing constant official duty, as 
one of the Supreme Council of India, on a salary of ;^i 0,000 
a year. 

If then one would make himself a complete master of the 
immense wealth and various power of the English tongue, he 
must go back, with something of Macaulay's reverent enthu- 
siasm, to the perennial sources of that wealth and power. If 
one would bring his own tastes into harmony with the ex- 



222 OLD GREEK 

quisite and youthful beauty that pervades our Anglo-Saxon 
classics, he must leam to drink at the same pure Choaspian 
wellheads of inspiration at which drank such kings of thought 
as Milton, Bacon and Addison, Cowper, Macaulay, Hawthorne, 
and Lowell. 

By the reacting and suggestive influence of classical studies, 
the English language has been poHshed, enlarged, and greatly 
enriched in its resources and power of expression. It has been 
furnished with an ample outfit of words, which, like nimble 
Ariels, are ever waiting on the wing, to convey thoughts from 
mind to mind. From its unrhythmical rudeness and stiff, un- 
accommodating barrenness, as wielded by Chaucer and his con- 
temporaries, its gradual changes and successive accretions have 
made it what we now boast it to be — a language unsurpassed 
for affluence of idiom, for flexibility and stateHness of rhythm, 
by having grafted upon its vigorous Saxon roots the graceful 
suppleness of the Greek, with the compact energy and melody 
of the Latin. 

Almost the entire body of British and American authors, 
whom we are taught to accept and follow as exemplars of a 
chaste and forceful style, have confessed their indebtedness for 
the right development of their native gifts to the forming and 
inbreathing spirit of the ancient languages. 

One might justly apply to these favorite authors the remark 
that Gifford appHed to Hume : *' His taste was that of the 
Attics. So far as the genius of the two languages would per- 
mit, he had collected the very juice and flavor of their style, 
and transfused them into his own." 

If anything need be added to this positive side of the argu- 
ment, it is furnished by the negative testimony of confessions 
similar to that of Sir Walter Scott, when his " palsied but 
beloved hand " writes, " I would give one half of my Hterary 
reputation, could I rest the other half on a basis of sound 
classical learning." 

At this point, if anywhere, it should be stated that a knowl- 
edge of the ancient languages is of material service in master- 
ing the details of modem science. The terminologies of all 



GREEK SCHOLAR 223 

modern science are based on the Greek and Latin, and the 
first requisite for mastering the principles of a science is a 
mastery of the terms by which they are formulated. These 
terminologies are easily remembered and correctly handled, if 
one is familiar with their Greek and Latin roots. To others 
they present a wilderness of perplexing epithets, hard to be 
comprehended and harder yet to be remembered. 

For an illustration, take the description of our wayside pop- 
lar, as it stands in the botanies : 

" Populus dilatata : aments cyhndric : bracts lacerately 
fringed : calycine scales turbinate, obHque turbinate, entire : 
leaves acuminate, deltoid, serrate : trunk lobed and sulcate." 
Such a description reads as if three languages had swallowed 
each other. 

II. The second statement is that the ancient classics 
enlarge our stock of positive knowledge. In the departments 
of history, of oratory, of philosophy and poetry, they present 
us not simply with models of what is attractive in manner, with 
exemplars of what is most gracious and forcible in style ; but 
also with magazines of intellectual wealth, with priceless treas- 
uries of thought and wisdom. If it be true that Thucydides 
and Demosthenes, Livy and Tacitus, have never yet been 
eclipsed in clear compactness and picturesqueness of style, it 
must also be granted that we have no other indisputable 
vouchers for many of the facts and events they have placed on 
record. The statements of modern writers in the old historic 
fields we accept because they are based on the testimony of 
ancient writers. 

The opinions of the modern historian come to us with only 
so much of authority as hearsay evidence comes before judge 
and jury. Such secondhand evidence is always ruled out, when 
anything more certain and trustworthy can be produced. And 
the student of history, of law, of science, who fails, through in- 
dolence or inability, to rest his conclusions on the highest 
sources of authority, can not safely trust to his own judgment, 
and is unworthy to be trusted by others. 

As to the ancient philosophy, it may have outwardly an anti- 



224 OLD GREEK 

quated and obsolete look. Cobwebs and dust are there 
beyond any denial. Yet inwardly age has only served to 
mellow and improve. The bottles are old, to be sure, but the 
racked and sparkling wine is still rich with the sunshine of 
^gean summers. 

It is well known to scholars that the substance of Plato's 
unanswerable argument for the existence of a Supreme Designer 
was borrowed from Xenophon's " Memorabilia." This book was 
also one of Franklin's favorite authors, when he was laying the 
broad foundation of his philosophical character. 

Although Aristotle's " Organon " has been partially superseded 
by the new " Organon " of Bacon ; although the " Republic " of 
Plato is but a dreamer's air castle in the noonHght that blazes from 
the Declaration of Seventy-six ; although the death of Socrates 
loses much of its sublimity beside the divine sacrifice of Calvary; 
yet there are points of eminence on which these three Greek 
philosophers stand unapproached and uneclipsed. There is a 
fountain of profoundest wisdom in their teachings, at which 
modern philosophy has filled its beakers, always without ex- 
hausting the supply, and slaked the thirst of its disciples, too 
often without confessing its indebtedness. 

Time has brought no discount to the value of Hippocrates as 
a text-book for the medical students of to-day ; and the " Oath 
of Hippocrates " is still a sacrament to every conscientious 
physician. In the study of disease and the making of a 
diagnosis, Hippocrates may be safely followed to-day. In fact, 
Hippocrates followed the principles of Bacon's philosophy nearly 
two thousand years before Bacon was born. 

The man who thoroughly understands the literatures and 
antiquities of Athens and Rome differs from one ignorant of 
them, in much the same way that a man who has traveled the 
world over, with his eyes open, differs from one whose knowl- 
edge is limited to what is going on in his native village. 

It has been proved by the recent explorations of Doctor 
Schhemann and others that the pictures of early society painted 
by Homer, ^schylus, and Theocritus contribute as much to 
our real and exact knowledge as if they were professed his- 



GREEK SCHOLAR 225 

torians, bound to tell the whole truth, without fear, prejudice, 
or favor. 

In broad effect and net purport their works are pictorial 
histories, illustrated by the calcium lights of legend and 
rhythm. To read Herodotus is sitting by the cozy fireside 
and hearing an old traveler recount his adventures in foreign 
lands. To read Homer or Theocritus is taking the pilgrim's 
staff, donning the pilgrim's shoon, and seeing with your own 
eyes the wonders of the world. 

The historian is a talker. If he talks well and to the point, 
he makes an impression. The poet is a painter. If he is a 
master of his art and paints to the life, he not only makes an 
impression, but he fixes it. You may remember the historian's 
talking, if you try hard. The painting you can not forget, try 
your hardest. It will haunt your dreams, and cling to the 
memory, as the telltale blood clung to the key of Bluebeard's 
closet. 

It may be said, then, that reading the ancient classics adds 
to our stores of positive and substantial knowledge. It brings 
us into intimate acquaintance with the private habits and 
public institutions, with the amusements and industries, the 
rehgious ceremonies and superstitions, the manners and morals 
of nations who have figured prominently in the history of our 
race, who have helped us to solve important problems in the 
science of government, who have made valuable contributions 
to the treasures of art and literature. 

Leaders in modern science are fond of insisting that modern 
civiHzation has been gradually developed, by " the survival of 
the fittest," from the inchoate civilization of earlier centuries. 
" A missing Hnk " in the growth of social institutions is some- 
thing they can not too deeply deplore. Yet they would, by 
rejecting the ancient classics, deliberately break the chain of 
historical events, and dig an unbridgable gulf between the 
present and the long ago. They would shut the door in the 
face of the great thinkers of Athens and Rome, and say to 
them, "You have played your parts, and we need you no 
longer." They would thus shut us out from 



226 OLD GREEK 

The glory that was Greece, 

And the grandeur that was Rome. 

One of the railroad magnates, without dreaming that he was 
spending a cool hundred thousand in defense of the Greek 
fetish, imports a historic monoHth from Egypt, and gives it a 
new pedestal in the New World. All America welcomes the 
monoUth, but wants to know what good it will do. Money 
has brought it from the land of the Ptolemies, but miUions of 
money can not tell what it means. Two bronze sea crabs are 
found at the base of the obelisk, as it stood in Alexandria, on 
which were two mutilated inscriptions in battered Latin and 
oxidized Greek uncials. A modest college Hnguist, after 
months of careful study and research, and correspondence 
with other linguists, compels these inscriptions to announce 
that the mysterious monolith was set up at Alexandria 13-12 
years b.c, in the eighteenth year of Augustus Caesar. The his- 
torical meaning of the inscriptions is all made clear. They 
make a valuable contribution to the history of the Roman empire 
in Egypt. Even Mommsen, the greatest of German historians, 
is corrected in one of his elaborate conclusions. No finer 
example can be named of the value of classical learning than 
this recent solution of a complicated historic problem by the 
combined resources of patient industry, scholarly ingenuity, 
and the Greek fetish. 

It is no valid disparagement of classical literature to say that 
all its important monuments have been translated into modern 
tongues. How would a translation of Herodotus help to inter- 
pret an uncial epigraph on an Egyptian obeHsk? 

A similar objection would be equally valid against the fossil 
collections which geologists think so much of. If such reason- 
ing were good logic, it would lead to the establishment of 
economical cabinets, containing not original specimens, with 
the world's physical history autographed upon them, but filled 
up with cheap imitations, plaster of Paris copies of the original 
fossils, all warranted not to smell of the deluge. 

It is cheerfully allowed that one may capture an indefinite, 
distant idea of the old-time peoples and their authors by 



GREEK SCHOLAR 227 

reading English histories and translations. So one may hap- 
pen upon a shadowy notion of Niagara by reading what the 
guidebooks say of it, or of a great orator by looking at him 
through the window of a hotel. But if one would know and feel 
how much of subHmity can be expressed in the falHng of un- 
frozen avalanches, he must see and hear with his own eyes and 
ears. If he would know, in his inmost soul, how binding is 
the spell of real eloquence, he must put himself within the 
reach of an eloquent voice. 

It is not otherwise with the ancient authors. Their beauty 
and sublimity must be known by patient study, by intellectual 
contact and sympathy, before they can be appropriated to the 
mind's nutriment, as a living power. 

It is not worth the while to spend any time in exposing the 
folly of learning to swim with the help of bladders, or of trying 
to gain the rewards of laborious scholarship by certain easy and 
mechanical methods, which, to borrow Butler's unprecedented 
rhyme, render 

Latin and Greek no more difficile 
Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle. 

To dawdle over a loosely worded, slopshop, catchpenny 
translation of Homer, is not to be a student of Homer. 
Whoso claims that the two things are equivalent, is next door 
neighbor, in point of simplicity, to the rustic who built a corn- 
stalk fiddle, and after giving himself a squeaking concert upon 
it, wondered what there could be so very fascinating in the 
performances of an Ole Bull or a Paganini. 

It may be taken as a settled truth, as much settled as 
anything in algebra, that no classic masterpiece, ancient or 
modern, certainly none in the department of poetry or elo- 
quence, can be translated into a foreign tongue, so as to convey, 
unabridged, undimmed, and entire, the subtle essence and 
spiritual beauty of the original. 

The merest common sense tells us it must be so. To think 
it can be otherwise would be as absurd as to sit down before a 
cheap woodcut of Alpine scenery in a school geography, and 



228 OLD GREEK 

expect to be thrilled with the fervid rapture that kindled the 
soul of Byron when he sang of 

Jura answering from her misty shroud 

Back to the joyous Alps that call to her aloud. 

We should feel pity for the dullness of one who, invited to a 
personal interview with the Poet Laureate of England, invited 
to take him by the hand, look him in the face and talk with him, 
as a man talks with a friend, should turn upon his heel and 
coolly declare that he was much obUged, but he had at home a 
photograph of the poet. 

Has he a grain less of dullness who is contented with what 
he can gather about the crimes of Clytemnestra, the two-throned, 
two-sceptered Atridae, by nodding over the somnolent rhymings 
of a modern translator, when the sturdy ^schylus is himself 
close at hand, with hghtning in his eye, unearthly fire on his 
lip and divine energy in his rhythms that throbs, and burns, 
and melts? 

HI. My third statement is that the ancient classics teach 
the mind how to make the best use of itself and its knowledge ; 
that they strengthen the memory and ripen the judgment ; that 
they quicken the imagination and sharpen the discernment; 
that they refine the taste and awaken the loving perception of 
what is beautiful in thought, in action, and in art. 

The student sits down to a difficult passage in his Greek 
author. He carefully examines the original text, and brings to 
its rendering his best powers and resources. Here is a word 
he never encountered before, a new acquaintance to be culti- 
vated by consulting the lexicon. 

He takes it to pieces, as a botanist would analyze a strange 
plant and examines its constituent parts. Perhaps it belongs 
to a peculiar phrase that brings to notice some sharp contrast 
between his mother idiom and that of the Attics. Perhaps it 
wears the disguise of a provincial dialect and illustrates the 
Protean flexibiUty of the Greek tongue. Yonder comes a refer- 
ence to mythology, and with the aid of his classical dictionary 
he is admitted to the wonderfiil secrets of a false religion, 



GREEK SCHOLAR 229 

whose first commandment was to worship the likeness of every- 
thing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters 
under the earth, with a special supplementary image of the Un- 
known God. 

The mention of a city, a mountain, or a river invites him to 
consult his ancient atlas. A disputed reading, or a false punc- 
tuation calls for the exercise of his best judgment ; a figurative 
expression wakes up his imagination; an unusual meter tasks 
and schools his perception of harmony. Thus the obscurities 
of the passage are successively cleared up j one by the lexicon ; 
another by the grammar ; a third by history ; a fourth by the 
atlas ; a fifth by thoughtful ingenuity ; all by the help of patient 
research and tasteful discrimination. The result is to be em- 
bodied in an English counterpart to the Greek that shall con- 
vey the same impression to an English ear that was conveyed 
by the original to an Attic ear. This gives a practical exercise 
in the handling of one's vernacular. 

Finally the result must be hived away in the memory, and 
held subject to future orders, and as memory sometimes 
betrays, it ought to be committed to writing. 

When Plato was asked what was the chief employment 
of the future life, he promptly repHed, " The study of mathe- 
matics." Plato's method of creating a little heaven below, 
hke Charles Francis Adams's remedy for the defects of college 
discipline, would be to introduce a little more of mathematics. 
There is no basis for the too common belief that Plato and 
classical studies are at variance with Euclid and geometry. 

It would not be in my heart, even were it in my power, to 
magnify the importance of classical studies at the expense of 
others, whose practical value is fully acknowledged. No wrong 
verily is done to other studies, many of which can boast a 
closer reference to money-earning enterprises, and the creation 
of material values, if it is claimed, as truth demands it to be 
claimed, that not another of them calls into wholesome play 
so many and such various faculties ; not another of them con- 
tributes so essentially to the well-balanced discipline and com- 
plete furniture of the entire intellect. Other studies are 



230 OLD GREEK 

allowed to be indispensable. Other studies are the beams and 
rafters, without which an edifice could not be built. 

Classical learning is the fine art that gives proportion and 
symmetry to the structure; that clothes it with the grace of 
comely embellishments ; that surrounds it with groups of trees 
haunted by singing birds ; that enriches it with the works of 
master artists; that makes it not simply a shelter from the 
frost and tempest, but also the home of comfort, elegance, and 
life's supreme enjoyment. 

In youth the mind is imaginative, rather than calculating. 
In youth, then, is the golden time to chasten, to direct, to 
strengthen, to fructify this most wonderful of God's gifts — the 
imaginative faculty. To say that the mind should feed on dry, 
cold, philosophical, or mathematical rations, simply because it 
hungers for a warm, generous, classical diet, is most absurdly 
cruel. 

Yet too many educational Gradgrinds claim to have achieved 
an excellent discipline, if they have strangled the unweaned 
imagination, and in its place set to work the algebraic and 
logarithmic faculties, like two women grinding at a mill. 

These Gradgrinds should study Webster's reply to Hayne. 
They should notice what it was that subdued his hearers, sub- 
dued the whole country, and still subdues its readers most 
completely to the power of that mighty master of well-chosen 
words. They should see how in that memorable reply, the 
imagination, disciplined by the ^neid and the Iliad, illu- 
mined, Hke a rising sun, the great statesman's waving fields of 
knowledge, flanked by hedgerows of sarcasm and solid ram- 
parts of argument. 

In cultivating the power of discerning, reproducing, and en- 
joying the beautiful in art, in letters, and in action, we are still 
disciples to the Attics, and with all our progress in the material 
arts, we shall probably remain their disciples to the world's end. 
With the Attics not only was each effort of genius, but each 
development of character, each pubHc and personal achieve- 
ment, tried and judged by the severest standard of ideal excel- 
lence. In Plato's philosophy the summit of moral perfection 



GREEK SCHOLAR 23 1 

is styled to koXov, " The beautiful." In the everyday conver- 
sation of Athens, the highest form of virtue was rj KaXoKdyaBia, 
" The beautiful goodness." Whatever pertained to the sense 
of comeliness in shape, or motion, or character ; whatever per- 
tained to the faculty of befitting expression and artistic criti- 
cism, the leading thinkers of Athens were perfect masters of. 
In this particular they stand out before the world's reverence, 
inviting it to imitate, defying it to excel. 

Taken then as critical and discipHnary studies, there is 
no danger that we shall overestimate the value of the Greek 
classics. They have a world-wide mission to accompHsh, sec- 
ond only to the mission of inspired truth that comes to us in 
the Greek of the New Testament. 

Wherever the human mind asserts its inborn right to self- 
empire, this same Greek beauty comes, like a gentle sister, to 
take down its native ferocity, and make the element of liberty 
an element as well of law and obedience. 

It breathes itself into the language and literature of all civil- 
ized peoples. It causes their ethical and intellectual life to 
crystallize into graceful, attractive forms, and grow transparent 
to the light of reason and law. Even the Christian faith, 
whose prerogative it is to make all the works both of God and 
man subservient to its honor, takes to itself all the beauty of 
the Greeks, and makes it the beauty of holiness. 

One of the higher uses of classical learning is employed by 
a distinguished preacher in illustrating the doctrine that Christ 
as a human brother is also a divine helper ; that we need have 
no fear of Christ as a man, while as a God we can rest securely 
on his omnipotence. 

When Hector goes to his last battle, his wife meets him at 
the Scaean gate, followed by a nurse with their infant boy, 
Astyanax. Hector reaches out his arms to take the boy. 
Screaming with terror at the sight of his father's burnished hel- 
met and nodding plume, the boy clings with averted face to the 
bosom of his nurse. Hector, with a fond smile, lays aside his 
frightful headgear, and the little Astyanax leaps at once into 
the familiar arms. So Jehovah, lord of battles, when seen with 



232 OLD GREEK 

the awful surroundings of his Sinai glory, fills his children with 
terror ; but in the lowly person of Christ, the crucified, the Man 
of Sorrows, he lays the helmet off, and we find our dearest joy 
in a Father's embrace. In this way. Christian scholarship 
brings the Bible and the IKad into fellowship as teachers of 
gospel truth. 

IV. This leads to the fourth and final statement, that we 
study the ancient classics because they furnish helps to theo- 
logical science and religious improvement. The stale hue and 
cry about the immorahty of the Greeks and Romans has had 
its day and lost its terror. One who can trust himself, or who 
can be trusted to ramble through our cities, or even one of our 
quiet villages, where Bulwer and Zola and Tolstoi, and all that 
wanton tribe, are beckoning like painted harlots at the street 
comers, begging to be read, may count himself as proof against 
the so-called indecencies of Homer and Theocritus. 

To swallow the filthy camel of our cheap modern fiction, 
and then piously strain at the gnat of ancient impurity, is 
a sample of phariseeism too broadly ludicrous to be argued 
against. The dramatic works of Shakespeare, who is obnoxious 
to similar charges, without the excuse of a false education, we 
welcome to the sanctity of domestic libraries, alongside Bunyan 
and Doddridge. The man who should talk seriously of ostra- 
cizing Shakespeare, on the ground of social improprieties, would 
hardly find a second voice to keep him in countenance. More- 
over, the proscriptive demand that the records of Greek and 
Latin genius be withheld from the student, as poisoned fare, if 
consistently carried out, would consign him for Hfe to the cold 
seclusion of a monastery as the only salvation for purity and 
innocence in a world of open sin. 

Not that it is impossible for youthful purity of heart to get 
stained by reading the ancient, unsifted classics. So it is pos- 
sible for the same youthful purity to get stained by reading 
a work on physiology or some portions of Holy Writ. One 
mind's meat is sometimes another mind's poison. The influ- 
ence of a given study depends very much upon the mental 
temper, aptitude, and receptivity of the student; just as the 



GREEK SCHOLAR 233 

effect of a shower depends on the kind of seed it moistens 
in the soil. The shower is not to be blamed if it sometimes 
hastens the growth of thistles along with the wheat. No more 
should the ancient classics be hastily and wholly condemned, 
because in some imaginations, already prurient and ripe for 
evil, they may have quickened the seeds of unhallowed 
thought. 

It is not very extravagant to suppose that by reading the 
ancient classics one may become more sensible of the duties 
and dignities of a Christian profession, even as Paul felt his 
missionary spirit stirred within him, when he saw the Athenians 
wholly given to idolatry. That classical reading will make one a 
more intelligent Christian, and more competent to give valid 
reasons for his faith and practice, will not be questioned by 
any. This is made certain by the fact that a large portion of 
what he holds to be inspired truth was first recorded in the 
Greek tongue; while an important body of evidences for its 
authenticity is preserved in the Greek and Latin Fathers. 

The great authorities of the Christian church have always 
held to be a sufficient defense of the classical studies that in 
them alone are we able to learn most fully what man will do 
when left free from the restraints of the divine word and its 
ministry. They are persuaded that the Christian scholar will 
read sermons of good even in the stocks and stones of an idola- 
trous people. They are persuaded with Livy — heathen though 
he was — that it is wholesome and profitable to make the 
acquaintance of human nature and civil society in all its differ- 
ent stages of development and progress ; that from this large 
fund of information we may draw out what is good and utilize 
it, while we see the mischief of what is sinful and learn to 
abhor it. 

The eye of devout faith clearly sees a divine purpose in the 
growth of a competent language for the gospel revelation — a 
language that should be not only competent, but with scholars 
universal. In the preparation of this most wonderful language 
we can see Darius and Cyrus, PhiHp and Alexander, the in- 
famous Herod, the Ptolemies, and the Romans acting, with- 



234 OLD GREEK 

out knowing it, for the glory of the coming gospel. They 
helped unconsciously to mature a fit dialect for the New Testa- 
ment, for the Septuagint, for such Jewish writers as Philo and 
Josephus, for the apostolic fathers and their successors in early 
church history, a dialect suited to express Christian truth in its 
boldest forms of aggressive attack and its sweetest ministries to 
the weary and unhappy. 

The glory that hallows the birthplace of Christ was given to 
a stable in the least of the cities of Judah ; the development of 
a language in which the Saviour's messages of grace should 
be proclaimed to the nations was reserved for the countrymen 
of Socrates and ^schylus and Sophocles. 

A few passages from a class lecture upon Sophocles 
are worthy of attention for their felicitous characteriza- 
tion of that poet. An imaginative description of the 
first victory of Sophocles is followed by a comparison 
of the two rivals of Greek tragedy : 

^schylus has a large following of fast friends, who have 
come to love him even for his eccentricities. They are so 
many convenient pegs — those little eccentricities — for hold- 
ing new garlands of worshipful admiration. These partisans 
of ^schylus mostly belong to that substantial, well-to-do, con- 
servative class, who have seen the folly of sowing the wild 
oats of undomestic bliss, with whom the pleasures of memory 
slightly outweigh seductions of hope. For thirty years they 
have applauded the efforts of ^schylus. Fully satisfied that 
nothing better was possible, they have accepted his triumphs 
as their own. These veteran theater-goers are confident that 
against a raw apprentice in rhythms, an unpracticed stripling 
of twenty-seven years, their veteran favorite will easily keep 
his ascendency. 

There happens to be just then another party at Athens, an 
aggressive, strenuous, wide-awake, loud-talking party, a party 
on fire with confident enthusiasm, that represents the " Young 
Attica " of the day. These young men have grown weary of 
the unsocial brusqueness and hauteur of the author of the 



GREEK SCHOLAR 235 

*' Agamemnon" and the " Prometheus Bound." They prefer 
to worship at the shrine of a rising luminary. They are pos- 
sessed by the companionable look and sculpturesque beauty 
that mark the yet unwreathed and unwrinkled forehead of 
the new candidate for their plaudits. 

Sophocles goes into the contest with whatever aids were 
to be had from youthful modesty and personal comeliness, 
from native genius patiently schooled, from abounding hope 
and resolute backers. The subject of his play was probably 
" Triptolemus." But this can not now be certainly proved. 
We do know that his polished and picturesque rhythms were 
more in sympathy with the reigning taste than were the 
rugged grandeurs of ^schylus. We know that the award of 
first honor to Sophocles was a verdict so bitterly mortifying 
to his veteran competitor that -^schylus retired in disgust 
from Athens. 

In the "Agamemnon " the colloquial parts are separated by 
such wide prairies of choral preaching that it takes a vigor- 
ous stretch of memory to bring them together. The choruses 
of Sophocles were required to chant less extendedly, more 
pertinently, and in closer keeping with the main current of 
the dialogue. Unlike ^schylus, Sophocles never allowed 
any perplexing muddle of the colloquial and choral parts. 
He was a finished artist, with a complete mastery of all the 
details of stage craft. It results from the changes introduced 
by Sophocles that the connectedness and dramatic interest of 
his plays are better sustained. His style is chaste and pol- 
ished ad unguent prcesectum. It will bear the Horatian test 
of the pared nail. 

Sophocles shows his constructive ingenuity in having the 
chorus fulfill the function of a modern playbill, by introduc- 
ing to the audience, by name, each new character that comes 
upon the stage. This is done so ingeniously and naturally at 
the close of a choral ode, that it seems to be an inseparable 
part of the orchestral performance. 

Sophocles carefully shunned the slang of the shop and 



236 OLD GREEK 

the market place. His works give us the best expression of 
the highest style of Attic culture. It was this that secured the 
most voices in his favor, and caused him to be fondly men- 
tioned as the Attic Bee, in recognition of a singular sweetness 
and mellowness of thought and phrase that deepened at times 
into the tenderest pathos. 

If ^schylus was the Shakespeare of the Greeks, then 
Sophocles was clearly their Tennyson. To Sophocles be- 
longed, in a measure not equaled by any master of Greek 
rhythms, the rare art of weaving words into music. 

* * * In choral passages the fashion of his shifting meters 
and cadences often closely resembles the fashion of his 
thinking, so as to undulate with the throb and play of emo- 
tions which he would excite. 

Sophocles not only knew how to say the thing he thought 
exactly, lucidly, and with melody, but how to make what he 
did say respond to that reserved and divinest energy of the 
soul, that voiceless perfume from the blossoms of thought, 
which defies all the tricks and traps of speech, and must 
remain forever unexpressed. 

If we compare the gifts and dramatic style of Sophocles 
with those of ^schylus, we are met with striking contrasts 
and dissimilitudes. As dramatic authors, each made a careful 
diagnosis of the Hellenic temperament. Both ministered 
very skillfully to the intellectual hunger of their hearers in 
the theater. 

Both were well aware that the Athenians had a special 
fondness for novelties of expression, and for the new presen- 
tation of old legends, ancient proverbs, and familiar passions. 
But the ^schylean way of doing this was unlike that of 
Sophocles, ^schylus would astonish the theater with new 
words farfetched and oddly compounded. He appeals to 
the fiercest passions the human heart can know, and breaks 
up all monotony by introducing characters half human, half 
mythic, and marked with insanity, like lo and Cassandra. 
In Sophocles there is a closer approach to the reality in 
common life. The range of emotions is more varied, the 



GREEK SCHOLAR 237 

figures are more distinctly seen, and the action more fully- 
worked out. 

Sophocles is more sedate and self-possessed than ^schy- 
lus, yet equally strong and overmastering. He wins the con- 
trol of one's feeling with less ado and bluster ; but his final 
triumph is only the more complete and signal, because the 
captive wakes up, Samson-like, from pleasant dreams and 
memories of melody to a sense of his enthrallment. In the 
symmetry and stateliness of movements there is a power that 
compels admiration. 

If the genius of ^schylus is a torrent tumbling headlong 
down the mountain side, plowing its channel as it goes, it 
would be equally appropriate to liken the genius of Sopho- 
cles to a deep, broad river that knows its resistless strength 
too well to care about noising it abroad. 

The "Prometheus Bound" of ^schylus, a tragedy 
often read and deeply pondered by Doctor North, in- 
vited a comparison of the classical and Christian types 
of divine suffering. A lecture entitled "Christ and 
Prometheus, a Lay Sermon for Students " contains the 
following appreciation of the pagan sufferer : 

Christ and Prometheus 

Prometheus has a great heart brimful of kindness toward 
men. His plan for helping them is ingenious, and executed 
boldly with a foreknowledge of its cost to himself. To his 
prophetic eye the future is all revealed, with its countless 
years of measureless agony. Yet his feeling and attitude 
toward the autocrat of the skies are marked with bitter 
loathings and fierce defiance. He dares the Olympic Thun- 
derer to hurl his hottest bolts. The name of Zeus is tossed 
from his lips in bitter scorn as a flagrant archetype of lust, 
revenge, and brutish force. 

He thinks it nobler to be in bondage to a rock than to 
kneel and crouch the vassal of a tyrant. He welcomes to his 
breast the ravening vulture as less terrible than those sleep- 



238 OLD GREEK 

less beaks of jealous fear, suspicion, and remorse that must 
pluck forever at the heartstrings of his oppressor. The 
earthquake is summoned to whelm his giant form. The 
quick lightnings stab it and blast it. The twisting whirl- 
wind rends it Hmb from limb. But none of these reach the 
mighty, chainless w^ill. These touch not the heroic spirit 
that soars, unhurt and indomitable, like Jove's own eagle 
wheeling above the smoke and roar of a battlefield. 

We can not deny there is grandeur in such a picture. As 
a creation of genius, as a triumph of dramatic art, we can not 
help admiring it. 

Beautiful is the tradition 

Of that flight thro' heavenly portals, 
The old classic superstition 
Of the theft and the transmission 
Of the fire of the Immortals ! 

First the deed of noble daring, 

Born of heavenward aspiration, 
Next the fire with mortals sharing, 
Then the vulture — the despairing 
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian. 

* * * It deserves to be noticed that the Greek legend, as 
interpreted and expanded in the " Prometheus " of ^schylus, 
brings about the restoration of fallen man by influences that 
affect the mind, while the heart is left untouched. The word 
" Prometheus," when translated, becomes the "forethinker." 
Paul refers to this in saying that " the Greeks seek after 
wisdom." This means that they rely upon wisdom to shield 
them from the ills of life and the terrors of death. 

The moral teachings of the '' Antigone " are summed up in 
the closing aphorism that " to be right-minded is man's highest 
blessedness." 

The vital element which Prometheus steals from Heaven 
is to be taken as a symbol of that fiery enthusiasm, that sharp 
intelligence, that inventive shrewdness, that watchful right- 
mindedness which assimilate man to the Infinite Thinker, 



GREEK SCHOLAR 239 

which penetrate the secrets of nature, and win conquests in 
the realms of science and art and practical industry. 

Prometheus, the forethinker, would elevate man, not by- 
purifying his affections, and regenerating his nature, but by 
sharpening his wits. In place of leading sinful men, through 
sorrow for sin, to a higher life, Prometheus would persuade 
men that they were virtuous and happy by putting them be- 
yond the reach of temptation, and beyond the pressure of 
physical wants. Surrounding men with the comforts, the 
luxuries, the elegancies, the amenities of life, he would say, 
" Let us eat and drink and have a good time, for there is no 
hereafter and to-morrow we die." 

In place of using nature's laws to illustrate God's infinite 
power and goodness, he would teach men how to express 
their ideas of beauty and utility in architecture and agricul- 
ture ; how to rummage the bowels of the earth for wealth ; 
how to analyze plants and minerals for healing remedies ; 
how to subjugate the brute creation, and how to persuade 
even the elements to do his bidding. In place of teaching 
dependent mortals to lean confidingly on the strength of an 
almighty and fatherly arm, Prometheus would goad them on 
to brilliant and exulting displays of their own mental energy. 
He would tell them to put away fear, and to believe in the 
sufficiency of their own strength. 

It was a radical defect in the religious system thus indorsed, 
that it exalted talent above virtue. It enthroned genius, 
wit, courage, and cunning as objects of supreme reverence, 
while honesty, charity, prayerfulness, and humble faith were 
looked down upon as amiable weaknesses, when they should 
have been embraced as cardinal and saving excellences. 

The Promethean creed said to purity of heart and life, 
" Sit you off yonder in the corner, and waste your unneeded 
sweetness in obscurit}^" It said to beauty and brilliant 
refinement, " Come up higher ; occupy a throne, where all 
lips may do you reverence." Habits of intemperance were 
fostered under the feint of worshiping a divinity. Keeping 
sober was ingratitude and impiety. Keeping sober was 



240 OLD GREEK 

refusing the gifts of a generous Providence. Getting drunk 
was getting religious.^ 

For falling into such errors of faith and practice, the Greeks 
are not to be condemned as severely as if they had enjoyed 
the full noonlight of revealed truth. Yet theirs was not 
altogether an ignorant sinfulness. They could admire the 
memorable reply of Phidias, when remonstrated with for 
chiseling so carefully the backs of his statues ; statues that 
were to stand high up against the wall, where the fronts alone 
could be seen. "But the gods will see the whole," said this 
sincere, sham-hating artist. 

These Greeks had convictions of an all-seeing Providence, 
which they never recognized in action. In the calms of 
fervid thought, in the sad wrecking of cherished hopes, in the 
mystery of birth and death, they heard strange whisperings 
from eternity which they tried to smother by rushing into 
frivolous mirth or maddening wassail. They had ideas of 
duty and guilt, of conscience and retribution that were ignored 
in real life, and only used to embellish a history, or to point 
the moral of a tragedy, and sadden the rhythm of a choral 
dirge. 

* * * Whence comes it, then, that our thoughts so seldom 
fasten upon the intellectual attributes of the Messiah? It 
is simply because his infinite goodness and sympathy as the 
Man of Sorrows first enchain our love and adoration. This 
it is that first enters and preoccupies the soul that clings to 
the cross. In the adorable mystery of a triune Godhead, 
goodness is the distinguishing attribute of the Messiah, as 
greatness is that of the Father, and inspiration that of the 
Holy Ghost. 

As a moral exemplar, the life of Christ teaches with a 
gentle force, not easy to be resisted, that Christian heart- 
work is better than the Promethean headwork. As a man 
thinketh in his heart, so is he in his life. Headwork too 

1 Aristotle explains the word 6oivai, " feasts," by an etymological 
exposition, "that it was thought a duty to the gods to be drunk." — 
Bulwer's " Pelham," Vol. I, page 17. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 241 

often fosters that vicious growth of pride and arrogance 
which goes before destruction. Heartwork leads to that 
poverty of spirit and that self-abnegation which inherit the 
priceless rewards of an unselfish Christian life. 

Headwork gives out a cold wintry light, like the moon 
gilding an iceberg, that shows the path of duty, without 
winning one to pursue it. Heartwork diffuses warmth as 
well as light. It bids the flowers of kindness and affection 
to spring up, and the songs of rejoicing to wake. It causes 
wisdom's ways to be welcomed as ways of pleasantness and 
peace. Headwork can bring fair semblances of joy and 
satisfaction so long as fortune smiles, and life's lamp burns 
exultingly. But let the nights of disaster come ; let health 
and riches fail ; let false-hearted, summer friends take leave, 
and the friendship of headwork will have deserted with the 
rest, leaving the soul naked, miserable, and in want of every- 
thing. * * * 

Reference has been made to Doctor North's faculty 
for coining proverbs. The lecture " Greek Proverbs," 
while it traverses the same ground as the article in 
Volume 85 of the " North American Review," contains 
much material peculiar to itself, and is here reproduced 
in part. 

Greek Proverbs 

In one of his choral odes Sophocles names four particulars 
that characterize a proverb — its wisdom, its unknown origin, 
its pithiness, and its currency. 2o<^ta yap €k tov kXelvov e-rro^ 
7re(f)avTaL : in wisdom by an unknown somebody, this notable 
saying has been put into circulation, " that the wrong way seems 
always to be the right way to him whose thoughts God is lead- 
ing on to ruin." 

If Chesterfield had been a careful student of the " Antigone," 
he would never have written it down in his heartless code of 
etiquette and worldly wisdom that " a gentleman never uses 
a proverb." 



242 OLD GREEK 

This restriction upon high-bred language contributes an em- 
phatic hint towards an answering of the question, Wherein 
consists the essence of a proverbial expression? According 
to Chesterfield's fastidious way of looking at them, proverbs 
are made vulgar and offensive by being so often in the mouths 
of the unlettered. In other words, a proverb is an expression 
curt and pithy, that embodies an accepted truth current among 
the milHon as a part of its traditional folklore. 

Another definition, equally satisfactory, may be had by 
taking the word to pieces, and looking at its etymology, in 
schoolmaster fashion. 

As the pronoun is used in place of a noun, to avoid its too 
frequent repetition, so the proverb is a representative phrase, 
resorted to for the purpose of shunning tedious argument and 
cumulative explanation. The proverb offers an apology and 
justification for jumping at a conclusion by a single stride, 
without the fatigue of picking one's steps painfully along the 
difficult highways of formal logic. Its strength is based on the 
principle that as good wine needs no bush, so sound sense can 
command approval, without the appeals and flourishes of a fine 
rhetoric. 

In geometry, when a theorem is once proved, it is proved 
conclusively and proved for always. It can ever after be re- 
ferred to as an indisputable truth. So in the minds of the 
unlettered, when a saying passes into a proverb, and is clothed 
with the sanctions of antiquity, mysterious origin, and un- 
limited acceptance, it carries the authority of a moral demon- 
stration. The proverb speaks ex cathedra. It gives out 
oracular decisions from which there is no appeal, — the unlet- 
tered ancients never questioned the wisdom of an oracle, — 
albeit its right interpretation was often a puzzle to the wisest. 

So there may be a lurking doubt about the right application 
of the proverb, in a given set of circumstances, when in the 
popular faith, the proverb itself will not be seriously questioned. 

Among the Greeks, proverbs were called Trapoi/xtat, " wayside 
idioms," so called to describe their adaptedness for meeting 
everyday wants ; and to distinguish them from the more logical 



GREEK SCHOLAR 243 

and discriminating language of scholars and philosophers. At 
Rome they were called adagia, " adages," because they were ' 
ad agendum apta, practical maxims fitted for solving the daily 1 
problems of Hfe. 

These synonyms clearly set forth one of the prime elements 
of a proverb : its concrete, practical force, and its currency 
with the masses. The cause that has a sturdy, resolute prov- 
erb on its side is a cause not to be altogether despaired of. 
A syllogism would have no force with the ignorant teamster, 
who doubted if he could draw an inference, but was sure his 
horses could draw it, if the traces were only strong enough. 
Ask this ignorant, conscientious teamster if it is right to do evil 
that good may come. With a hghting up of the eye, Hke a 
mathematician's over his quod erat demonstrandum^ with a 
click of his lips, like the premonition of a rifle's discharge, he 
will tell you that "the wild goose never lays a tame egg." 
That settles the question for him. 

Poor Barnaby Rudge, shattered in brain and heart, could 
not construct an argument, but so long as his sententious raven 
kept preaching that sermon in a proverb's nutshell, " Never 
say die," he could believe and act out his behef in the final 
triumph of the true and the right. 

The proneness of the unlettered to slide into the use of 
proverbial, wayside idioms, even on grave occasions, appears in 
what is told of an Irish murderer sentenced to be hung. 
When called upon by a Protestant clergyman, and urged to 
prepare for his approaching fate, he replied that he was a 
Roman CathoHc, and would prefer to talk with a Catholic 
priest. " But you must be willing that I should pray for you, 
are you not?" "O yes," said the criminal, with a mournful 
smile, " O yes ; I guess so, every Httle helps." 

Said another quick-witted Irishman to Woodward, the 
Bishop of Cloyne, when the Bishop was zealously defending 
the doctrine of purgatory, " Your riverence had better stop 
where you are. Your riverence might go further and fare 
worse." 

The mystery that hangs over our raciest proverbs adds to 



244 OLD GREEK 

their charm and authority. Having existed for a period, 
whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, they 
form a code of social ethics almost as binding on the popular 
conscience as is the common law in English courts. 

An aged woman who had known heavy sorrows, and had 
often consoled herself with the sentiment that " God tempers 
the wind to the shorn lamb," was excessively grieved when 
told that she was indebted for her comfort not to the inspired 
word, but to the unscriptural " Sentimental Journey " by Lau- 
rence Sterne. 

Fifty years ago, Henry W. Shaw, then a sophomore, under- 
took to immortalize himself by climbing the lightning rod on 
the chapel spire. Faihng in this adventure, he changed his 
name to Josh Billings and won a wide renown by concealing 
nuggets of original wisdom in misspelled proverbs. Some of 
his quaint sayings have the flavor of genuine, time-honored 
proverbs, e.g. : 

1. Wit without sense is a razor without a handle. 

2. People of good sense are those whose opinions agree with ours. 

3. Style is everything for a sinner, and a little of it will not hurt a 
saint. 

4. Many men are like eggs, too full of themselves to hold any- 
thing else. 

5. A mule is a bad pun on a horse. 

6. Necessity is the mother of invention, but Patent Right is the 
father. 

7. Mice fatten slow in a church. They can't live on religion any 
more than ministers can. 

The proverbs of a nation are then its autographs of character. 
In them, as in " a sanctuary of intuitions," may be found its 
confession of religious faith, its maxims of social and reUgious 
philosophy ; an epitome of its genius, its wit, and its house- 
hold wisdom. They form a convenient, usable treasury of 
choicest maxims, to which poets resort for the burden words 
of their songs. Fictionists use them as finger boards pointing 
to the moral they would teach. Historians follow them as 
clews in their study of manners, customs, and opinions. Orators 



GREEK SCHOLAR 245 

and politicians go to them to catch the right keynote, when 
they would pipe tunes to which the people will be willing to 
dance. 

The millions of hearty votes that were given years ago to a 
" Rough and Ready " candidate for the Presidency throw more 
light on the character of the American people than the elabo- 
rate histories of Bancroft and Hildreth. 

The Spanish proverb, "The nearer the church the further 
from God," gives a compact exegesis of Spanish character. 
No other than a priest-ridden, hypocritical nation would suffer 
itself to be traduced by the permitted currency of such a 
sentiment. 

Archbishop Trench, in his scholarly and, in some particulars, 
masterly work on " The Lessons in Proverbs," has little to say 
in detail about those current among the ancient Greeks. He 
dismisses them with the general statement that " in studying 
the Greek proverbs one is struck with the evidence they furnish 
of a leavening through and through of the entire nation with the 
most intimate knowledge of its own mythology, history, and 
poetry. The infinite multitude of slight and fine allusions to the 
legends of their gods and heroes, to the earlier incidents of their 
own history, to the Homeric narrative ; the delicate side glances 
at these which the Greek proverbs constantly embody, assume 
an acquaintance, indeed a famiHarity with these on their part, 
with whom they passed current that almost exceeds behef. 
As bearing testimony to the high intellectual training of the 
people who employed them, to a culture not restricted to cer- 
tain classes, but diffused through the whole nation, no other col- 
lection can bear the remotest comparison with this." 

So far Archbishop Trench is entirely right, as will appear to 
any one who reads the "Prometheus Bound." But in his 
further assertion that "in many most important respects the 
Greek proverbs, as a whole, are inferior to those of many 
nations of the modern world " there is not a little of rashness 
and inconsistency. This work of Archbishop Trench is a very 
choice contribution to our standard literature. Yet if one 
takes the fi-eedom to look this gift horse in the mouth, it may 



246 OLD GREEK 

be arraigned for unduly depreciating the Greek proverbs. A 
careful study of these Greek proverbs will satisfy the student 
that they are equally attractive in dress and equally rich in 
practical wisdom with the proverbs of modern nations. 

******* 

Any thorough search into Greek life and Greek letters must 
embrace the Homeric poems. The proverbs they contain are 
remarkable for two things : for their deep moral significance, 
and the extreme simplicity of their phrasing. Some of them 
read like maxims from Holy Writ : 

Says the Bible, " The prayer of the righteous man availeth 
much." Echoes Homer, "Whoso obeys the gods, him they 
promptly listen to." 

According to the Apostle to the Gentiles, " The whole crea- 
tion groaneth and travaileth in pain until now." Echoes 
Homer, " To live in pain, such is the lot appointed to misera- 
ble mortals." 

Says the Bible, " Be careful to entertain strangers : many 
have thereby entertained angels unawares." Echoes Homer, 
" All beggars and strangers are from Zeus." Says the Bible, 
"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." 
Echoes Homer, " The slow overtakes the swift." 

Says the Bible, " The God of Israel is he that giveth strength 
and power." Echoes Homer, " Mighty is he who reveres the 
gods." According to Isaiah, "All flesh is grass, and all the 
goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." According to 
Homer, " As is the race of leaves, even such is the race of man." 

According to Solomon, " Foolishness is bound up in the 
heart of a child." According to Homer, "The younger are 
ever the inconsiderate." 

Hector's military aphorism that " Mars is two-sided and 
slays the slayer," has its indorsement in the message of David 
to Joab, " The sword devoureth the one as well as the other." 

Homer's proverbs are not rich in their outward phrasing. 
Concisely, not curiously expressed, they are remarkable for 
their truth and religiousness. The reason for this is clear. 
When Homer used it, the Greek language was in its infancy. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 247 

Words were rarely employed by Homer in secondary, or 
derivative senses. Where a later poet would resort to a brief 
metaphor, Homer went through with the ceremonies of a lengthy 
and labored comparison. There is just this difference between 
a Homeric proverb and one from ^schylus. The ^schylean 
proverb is apt to be a metaphor — Homer's proverb was never 
a metaphor. 

This will not justify us in thinking that Homer's genius was 
wanting in fertility, or that his pictures of society in the heroic 
age are defective and unfaithful. It is because Homer is an 
exact delineator of heroic manners, that his proverbs are what 
we find them to be, simple apothegms ; unadorned bald state- 
ments of moral truth. While proverbs belong to the literature 
of the unlearned, and the wisdom of the simple-hearted, it 
does not follow that they are born Minerva-like, full-grown and 
ready for action. They require to be tested by long experience, 
to be indorsed by successive generations, before they gain 
oracular authority. Wisdom is the daughter of experience. 
In a new or barbarous society, proverbs will be few and 
meager. As society refines itself, and accumulates practical 
wisdom, proverbs come to be more numerous and more 
quaintly worded, until they are compressed and polished into 

Jewels five words long 
That on the stretched forefinger of all time 
Sparkle forever. 

******* 
It used to be said of loose, preposterous reasoners, when 
they jumped from a false premise to a lame inference that 
"the fool's ass drinks up the moon." The saying was pro- 
verbial. It grew out of an anecdote told of a fooHsh donkey- 
driver, when he returned one night from the market, and led 
his tired beast to the watering trough for a drink. The trough 
was half full, and in the still water swam the mirrored face of 
the round moon. The thirsty ass quickly drank the water, and 
with it disappeared the image of the moon. The astonished 
fool thereupon ran into the house, and told his master that 
" the ass had drunk the moon." 



248 OLD GREEK 

As cheese digests everything but itself, so throughout all 
literature the ass teaches wisdom to others, itself an embodi- 
ment of dullness. From the ass of Apuleius down to the pons 
asinorum of geometry, the long-eared type of dullness has 
sharpened the wit and the whims of capricious authors, served 
their turn at many a tight pinch, inspired them with ludicrous 
conceits, while content to escape in the end with a kick and a 
cudgeling. 

In their facility at passing from land to land, and from age 
to age, diving beneath the hard pan of prejudice here, and 
breaking out in a new spot yonder, proverbs resemble the 
fountain Arethusa, which was fabled to have started from 
Arcadia, and after flowing beneath the earth and beneath the 
sea, to have emerged again in the isle Ortygia, the same 
fountain, though with a turbid tinge, and a fishy flavor, picked 
up on its subterranean journey. 

Enough perhaps has been said to show how it belongs to 
the nature of genuine proverbs, freighted with truth, to find 
their way through the tangled network of history and literature, 
breaking out here and there in healing springs of precept and 
admonition ; how they disturb the guilty pleasures of tyranny 
and wrong, with two-edged prophecies of retribution, hung by 
a single hair j how they run through master works of romance in 
golden threads of wisdom ; how they ride unseen beneath the 
hulls of great ships of state, helping the governor to direct 
them whithersoever he listeth. * * * 

Doctor North will be lovingly remembered by a host 
of students as an interpreter of Homer. The lecture 
" Homer's Women " will serve to recall the charm and 
the subtle, half -humorous play of fancy with which the 
teacher knew how to invest his favorite poet : 

Women of Homer 

In Homer's " Hymn to Apollo " occurs an appeal to the 
Maidens of Chios that might be taken as a fit text for the dis- 
course now in progress. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 249 

Farewell, ye maidens, and remember me 

Hereafter. When some stranger from the sea, 

A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore. 

And ask you, " Maids, of all the bards you boast, 

Who sings the sweetest ? Who delights you most ? " 

Then answer all, " A blind, old man of yore, 

He sweetest sang, and dwelt on Chios's rocky shore." 

In all the Homeric poems, according to my reading, this is 
the only passage that confesses itself to be personal to the 
author. In not another hexameter doth the poet's great heart 
break loose from restraint, become autobiographic, and syllable 
its one enormous wish, its yearning to be remembered. How 
mighty the surge of emotion that could thus dash through the 
fetters of a lifelong dumbness, and break over the barriers of 
habitual reticence. 

Why should the only prayer that Homer makes for praise 
and remembrance be addressed to the retired and sensitive 
maiden whose name is an emblem of dependence, rather than 
to the stalwart man, whose arm is mighty in the field, whose 
voice in the council is law and inspiration ? 

Homer's nature was thoroughly ingrained with common 
sense, if he was a versemaker. He had traveled far and wide, 
in an age when a day's journey was a hard day's work. He 
had suffered much, enjoyed much, and understood the ways of 
the world. He could fathom men's motives, through thick dis- 
guises. Life to him was an open book, gloomy and bright by 
turns with mixed revelations of human character. He knew 
its pages by heart. His own experience taught him that men 
are apt to be skeptical, calculating, selfish ; forever asking that 
impudent cui bono question. What are your goods good for?; 
while women are apt to be generous, impulsive, confiding, sat- 
isfied that a line of tender poetry may be of some worth, even 
if it will not pay for a tenderloin of beef. Like John Ledyard 
after him. Homer had found out that contempt and unkindness 
are seldom native to the female heart. 

Homer had more than wit enough to see what is seen by us 
all, that while man's nature is essentially prosaic, and compara- 



250 OLD GREEK 

tively coarse-grained, it belongs to a woman's instinctive self- 
respect to respect the minstrel's office; that her heartstrings, 
so long as not disordered by abuse, are in tune with the poet's 
lyre ; that her life, so long as unperverted, is one continuous 
sweet song, an idyl song that sings itself. 

Homer knew, too, that he had earned a special Hen on 
woman's gratitude. His genius had been always quick to 
appreciate her virtues ; slow to admit her faults ; happy to 
embalm each virtue in rhyme ; willing to separate the sin from 
the sinner, and to shroud each fault with the mantle of charity. 
******* 

Our poet's ideas of what constitutes a woman's praise and 
worth are sharply hinted at in the names selected for his 
heroines. Those names are not given to keep alive a grand- 
mother's memory (a most worthy motive) ; they are not given 
to insinuate a shy petition for silver porringers ; nor to put cap- 
tivating salt on the entailment of a homestead ; nor to compli- 
ment some bright particular star in the galaxy of letters ; nor 
because they have a certain tonnish termination, or strike the 
ear musically ; nor because fictionists have thrown about them 
a transitory luster. They are sometimes called added names, 
because not given in childhood, but after the owners have 
grown up, and shown that they deserve them. It was as if, in 
selecting a name for one of our children, we should leave a 
blank to be filled in appropriately after the child's character 
was developed. Homer's added names are significant of good 
qualities. Interpret the name Andromache, and it means " the 
Hero's Battle-Prize." Theano means "the Heavenly-Minded," 
" her looks commercing with the skies." Callianassa, " Ruhng 
by Beauty " (a most enjoyable despotism !) ; Cassandra, " Sister 
to Heroes"; Hecamede, "the Far-Thoughted " ; Euryclaea, 
" the Widely-Praised " ; Iphimedia, " the Strong-Thinker " (the 
stronger the better, if her thoughts are only right) ; Apseudes, 
" Hater-of- White-Lies " (an avis rara, some would say); 
Polyxena, " the Very-Hospitable " ; and so on down to 
Nausicaa, a name that threatens to break the jaw ; though it 
means " the Ship-Gaited," in token of her easy, graceful. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 251 

yacht-wise movements — an airy embodiment of the poetry 
of walking. 

Penelope means " the Web-Raveler," and thereby hangs a 
proverb. " The weaving of Penelope's web " is, at this day, 
the doing of a deed that is never done. Penelope was pressed 
to select a second husband from the many princely suitors for 
her hand. She promised to think of the matter, after she had 
woven a shroud for her aged father-in-law. Her trick to pro- 
long the weaving of the shroud is thus described : 

"During the day I was weaving the large web; but at 
night, when the torches were Ht, I unraveled it. Thus for 
three years I hoaxed the suitors, and kept them at a distance. 
But when the fourth year came, they found me out, through the 
connivance of the maidservants. Careless creatures ! Then 
I finished the shroud, though sorely against my will, and by 
compulsion." 

Homer's women have all the gift of beauty. Strange as it 
may seem, every mother's daughter of them, from princess to 
waiting maid, all are beautiful. Would the poet embody an idea 
of deformity, he selects some luckless representative of his own 
gender ; with a touch of Fancy's Circean wand, he twists him 
into ugliness; then bids him stand out and be laughed at 
through all coming time. The gentle sex always have gentlest 
usage. In his poetic capacity, with his thoughts in a fine frenzy 
surging, Homer could not think of a woman as otherwise than 
pleasing in shape and gesture. 

She had no business to be ugly. Her real mission was to 
mix gracefully, refiningly with grosser forms of humanity, and 
to lift them away from their earthliness with a power as subtle 
and resistless as that which lifts from the grass the dew of the 
morning. 

******* 

The beauty of Homer's women derives an added grace from 
the fact that their lives are in harmony with the laws of beauty. 
Though not analysts of their own nature, they unconsciously 
illustrate the doctrine that the truest beauty is not a thing of 
mere color and shape and dress, not something external and 



252 OLD GREEK 

separable, but a subjective quality, with its home in the heart, 
and its expression in that smile of goodness and self-poised 
inteUigence that gilds outward defect with spiritual comeliness ; 
that appeals to the universal sympathy with a freemasonry of 
kindly emotion not easy to be resisted by the stoutest of mas- 
culine hearts. 

The beauty that rests on this subjective basis must be durable 
and should be cultivated. It is not a capricious, evanescent 
quality that makes a hurried visit in girlhood, and after mar- 
riage abruptly departs, as something no longer wanted, as if to 
furnish indorsement for John Milton's infamous witticism, 
" Homely women should stay at home — they had their name 
hence." Homer's women are handsome, because they are 
homesome. Their beauty is a quahty that matures with the 
flight of years ; that keeps renewing itself out of the substance 
of home-bred virtues; that dwells securely in the ripe peach- 
bloom of the rounded healthy cheek ; that is not too bright or 
good for human nature's daily food ; that is not 

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null ; 

that smiles forth in cheerful serenity, with something of an 
angel light, from the gray locks of sunny age. 

Perhaps some part of the secret of this lastingness of beauty 
is revealed in the fact that Homer's women were all indus- 
trious. Nor is theirs an idle, mischievous, impertinent in- 
dustry. Their time was spent in spinning yarn less fictitious, 
less tangled, and more truthfully colored than that which threads 
the amazing labyrinths of village scandal. They have a finger 
in pies more proper and savory than a neighbor's troubles. 
The best, proudest, and daintiest of them are not too proud or 
dainty to rejoice in useful and domestic employments. 

Arete, the wife of an opulent king, queens it in the most 
quiet way, by twirhng sea-purple threads of wool, with her 
seat near the hearthstone, and her busy handmaids behind her, 
a wonder to look upon. 

Her daughter, Nausicaa, the ship-gaited, thinks it no shame 
to ride down to the seashore, with female slaves, and there 



GREEK SCHOLAR 253 

oversee that damp, saponaceous horror of modern house- 
keepers, that comes so befittingly after Sunday's renewal of 
the Christian graces. Nausicaa is up and about the house, 
with busy feet and nimble fingers, at the first blush of day. 
Though fawnlike and classic, her step tells you she is pos- 
sessed with the thought that she was born to do something for 
others, and to be something besides a piece of ornamental 
furniture. She knows how to harness and unharness the mules. 
She handles the whip and Hues gracefully. She drives with 
cool skill and judgment, while the trained mules tramp out an 
eager trochaic music beneath her steady hand. 

During the twenty years' absence of Ulysses from his kingdom 
and family, his true wife Penelope was busy at the loom and 
distaff. Tears and prayers were mixed with her weaving and 
spinning, while her heart in its secret chambers elaborated that 
softest, strongest thread in the web of being which time, sepa- 
ration, and sorrow only strengthen and sanctify. 

While the body of Hector was trailing about the walls of 
Troy, with his feet lashed to the chariot of Achilles, Androm- 
ache, the hero's battle-prize, ignorant that she was a widow, 
sat weaving a double splendid robe, in a retired chamber of 
Priam's palace. 

When Helen, divinest of women, is called from her palace, 
to witness the duel between Paris and Menelaus, that is to 
decide whether she shall be the wife of the one or the other, 
she is found weaving with her own fingers — her rosy, willing, 
and practiced fingers — an ample cloak, double and gHttering ; 
and in it she wrought the many exploits, achieved for her sake, 
by steed-taming Trojans and brass-mailed Greeks. Here was 
tapestry worth looking at — tapestry that would medicine the 
sore eyes of braggarts who can see nothing admirable back of 
the nineteenth century. Here was the genuine Gobelin tapes- 
try which the conceited Frenchman claims to have himself 
invented. While the adorers of Helen are doing battle for her 
smile on the tented field, she is weaving a pictured history of 
their exploits in a brilliant garment. 

Among the women of Homer (blessings on the poet !) there 



254 OLD GREEK 

is no Xanthippe to be found. The heroines of the Iliad and 
Odyssey are large-hearted, self-denying, and self-forgetting. 
Their tender sympathies flow out in unselfish channels. It is 
said of one among them that her words were warm as they fell 
from her lips. Whence this warmth of words, if not from the 
heart's outgushing sympathies? 

With all their beauty of form, grace of manner, economic 
activity, kindness, and winningness of heart, they seem wholly 
unconscious that they are what they are, charmed centers of 
attraction and mesmeric power ; cynosures to neighboring eyes, 
while their own 

Rain influence, and judge the prize of wit or arms. 

They live and exhale the fragrance of their souls not in them- 
selves, nor for themselves, but in and for the objects of their 

attachment. 

******* 

The domesticity of Homer's women is touchingly set forth 
in that scene of surpassing tenderness, the parting of Hector 
from Andromache. As this scene reads in the original, refus- 
ing to be translated, it will justify the highest praise of Homer, 
both as an analyst of female character and a descriptive artist. 
Surrounded as it is with details of crudest bloodshed, it looks 
out smilingly from its dark setting, like a fragrant white blos- 
som, in a crevice of sulphurous lava. Just as one is about to 
fancy himself reading a chronicle of fiends, it persuades him 
that the human heart has affections too deep to be extinguished 
by the rage of unholy strifes ; that heaven is brought nigh to 
earth in the pure artlessness of childhood, and the clinging 
fondness of a true wifehood. The heart of Hector is laid open 
before us. We watch the progress of a fierce struggle between 
his ambition to be thought a hero, with heart of steel, and his 
desire to be simply a man, obedient to each gentle impulse of 
his nature. We watch his brow grow pale with the forefeel- 
ing of his near death, as he leaves the battlefield, and pushes 
homeward through the crowded streets of Troy. 

We see Andromache, in her lonely chamber, brooding over 
the dangers that surround her husband, on the field of battle, 



GREEK SCHOLAR 255 

until her heart throbs tumultuously and her limp hand refuses 
to throw the shuttle. We see her hasten to the Scsean gate, 
while her nurse follows close behind, with the boy Astyanax. 
We see her shelter her eyes with her trembling hands, while 
from the shadow of the beech tree she looks out over the 
Trojan plain, now drenched with the blood of heroes. A glad 
flush mantles her cheek, when her eyes, withdrawn from the 
distant view, rest upon the tall, straight form of Hector, stand- 
ing close beside her, and gazing with all the father in his eyes 
upon their only child, throned Hke a radiant star on the breast 
of its nurse. We can hear her sobbing voice, in the pauses of 
the roaring battle, as she hangs upon her husband's hand ; tells 
him he is to her both father and mother and brother; and 
begs him not to go again to that dreadful field of slaughter. 
We can see her head droop, droop, droop, and her frame 
shudder, as Hector draws the dark picture of her possible 
future, in a distant house of bondage, plying the menial loom, 
and drawing water at the bidding of another. 

Then a brightness, joyous and sudden, flashes through her 
tears. The future is all shut out by the present, when Hector 
lays aside his nodding helmet that had frightened the child, 
and taking him in his arms prays that the gods will make him 
a braver man than his sire. In taking back the babe to her 
bosom, the wet, laughing eyes of Andromache meet the eyes 
of Hector, also wet and laughing, and their long, mutual, ear- 
nest gaze reveals enough of hope in their despair to make a 
heaven of hell ; and yet enough of agony in the joy to make 
a hell of heaven. 

Next he fondles her white hand, while they say their last 
words, and as she moves homeward lingeringly, looking often 
behind, with floods of weeping, we half expect to see her 
petrify into another Niobe, into a marble and immortal execra- 
tion of the horrors of war ! 

* * * The heroines of Homer wielded mighty influences. 
They held the shears and the threads of destiny. Their will and 
wish congregated armies and built navies. Cities were be- 
sieged and sacked at their bidding. They made and unmade 



256 OLD GREEK 

empires. Not often directly, and often unconsciously. Many 
a bluff, brusque warrior, who could tread the battlefield without 
the first thought of fear, was swayed by the soft touch of 
a daughter's hand. Many a scarred and veteran warrior who 
could drive whole phalanxes before him was himself ruled by a 
wife's whispered wisdom at home. The eye of beauty, lighted 
up by intelligence, with its light mellowed by goodness of heart, 
is always a throne of empire. Here was the hiding of the 
power of the women of Homer. 

As became a lover of poetry, Doctor North was deeply 
interested in the history and philosophy of rhyme. The 
following characteristic passages are from his lecture 
entitled ** Greek Rhymes " : 

The human ear is so sensitively and delicately fashioned that 
it rejoices in sounds that are socially concordant, sounds that 
are paired off musically. This same principle of harmonious 
dualism runs through nature and through all art. Things of 
beauty are most beautiful and yield the highest pleasure when 
they go in social pairs. A pair of bright eyes gives comeliness 
and animation to the human countenance. Put out one of the 
eyes, and the result is deformity through lack of balance. We 
admire a gay and graceful horse ; our sensuous admiration is 
more than doubled by the sight of a well-matched span of 
horses, as they move in graceful rhythm. Saihng clouds, wav- 
ing trees, the round moon, gain newness of expression when 
mirrored and rhymed in the brook below. 

Proserpine, herself a fairer flower, lends a nameless perfume 
to the flowers she gathers. Raphael's Sistine Madonna in the 
Dresden gallery is probably the most perfect painting ever 
painted. Here the divinity of beauty reveals itself more 
touchingly and winningly in the mother's face because it re- 
sembles so strikingly the face of the Christ-Child in her arms. 
The two faces respond to each other as rhyme to rhyme. 

So it is in music and in poetry. We are led captive by the 
ear almost as easily as by the eye, 

All the charm of all the muses often flowing in a rhyme. 



GREEK SCHOLAR 257 

A sweet note gains an added sweetness from repetition. Rhyth- 
mic Hnes, when freighted with thoughts that breathe, touch 
deeper springs of feehng if their united breathing fans the glow 
of words that rhyme. 

The love of rhyme is not the same in all natures, but it be- 
longs to our common humanity, and is as inseparable from it 
as the love for flowers, for romance, for music, for whatever is 
beautiful. 

Ben Jonson (who spells his rime correctly, without an K) 
pretended to beHeve that the classic Greek was fortunate in 
having accompHshed its highest mission, as a spoken language, 
before the invention of systematic rhyme. Ben Jonson even 
went so far as to use rhyme as a suicidal instrument for dis- 
paraging itself; just as David took Goliath's sword for cutting 
off Goliath's head, 

Greek was free from rime's infection ; 
Happy Greek by this protection 

Was not spoyled ; 
Whilst the Latin, queene of tongues, 
Is not yet free from rime's wrongs, 
But rests foiled. 

This is neither handsome nor just. Himself one of the spiciest, 
most abundant and felicitous of Enghsh rhymers, Ben Jonson 
ought to have spoken well of the bridge that has carried his 
name, safely and proudly, over the gulf of oblivion. The ox 
knoweth his owner, but Ben Jonson ignores the talaria that 
give hghtness to the feet of his own Pegasus. 

When Aristotle uses the word 6iJLOLOT€\evTo<;f " like-ending," 
his rhetoric reads like a prophecy of systematic rhyming. 

A similar prophecy may be found in the usage of the Greek 
poets, with whom words sometimes behave coquettishly, as if 
they had rhyming affinities, and only needed a little encourage- 
ment and coaxing to obey the exact methods of modern verse. 
If we take language as a gauge to indicate for us a nation's rise 
in the scale of refined expression, and then look at the progress 
of the Greeks in other arts, as in architecture, painting, and 



258 OLD GREEK 

sculpture, it becomes really a mystery and a wonder that they 
failed to perfect themselves in the rhyming art. 

Some would explain this by supposing that the principles of 
rhyming lie deep down in the interior, hidden resources of 
language, so as to require long periods of study, contrivance, 
and practice to bring them into full and free play. 

George P. Marsh supposes that the Greek poets purposely 
avoided rhymes as a contrivance too cheap and easy for their 
high standard of rhythmical expression. This solution of the 
problem can not be accepted this morning. One office of the 
Greek poet was to glorify the Greek tongue by organizing its 
wood, hay, and stubble, into the fabric of a noblest literature. 

As a people, the Attics were remarkably skilled in the science 
and production of musical effects ; and rhyme, in its simplest 
definition, is a species of music. The Greek language is won- 
derfully rich in materials for rhyming. 

Its homophonous, or like-sounding, terminations are very 
numerous and very musical. In fact, the use of rhyme, as an 
aid to expression, belongs so inherently and hence so legiti- 
mately to the language of Hellas that her poets frequently 
stumbled upon it unwittingly, as it would seem. Homer's 
rhymes would not have been more perfect if they had been 
introduced purposely, for giving the supreme finish to hexam- 
eter verse, as in the following couplets from the sixth book of 
the Odyssey : 

Kal dk crol air^ eoiKe fxera Trpwroicnv iSvra 
/SouXas ^ovKeieiv KCtddpa XP^^ eXfiar exovrd. 
ol 8^' oTviovTes, Tpeis 5' TjtdeoL ddXidovres 
ol 5* alel i64\ov(rL vedirXvra ei/jLaT exovres. 

It is noticeable that these two rhyming couplets are found in 
Homer side by side, with nothing between them. Yet it is not 
safe to suppose that in any case the rhymes in Homer were 
purposely introduced. When Homer sang in rhyme, it must 
have been because the rhymes came unsought, and fashioned 
themselves in obedience to one of the instincts of the language. 
To a musical ear like Homer's the effect would be pleasing, and 
the rhymes were suffered to remain as unconscious prophecies 



GREEK SCHOLAR 259 

of a far-off improvement in rhythmical expression. And this 
prophecy is fulfilled by the poets of modern Greece, who make 
use of rhyme as freely as the poets of Germany, France, and 
England. * * * 

I would ask special attention to the use of what is called by 
Greek grammarians Traprjxqa-L^, to illustrate the rhyming instinct 
of the Greek poets, and their habit of yielding, perhaps uncon- 
sciously, in moments of impassioned inspiration, to the rhym- 
ing tendencies of their language. A very good example of 
-n-aprjxrjoriSf or internal echoes, is found in the cradle song in the 
twenty-fourth Idyl of Theocritus, entitled the " Infant Hercules," 
which is regarded by some as the sweetest passage in all Greek 
literature. None will deny its exceeding beauty and tender- 
ness of thought and phrasing : 

Sleep, children mine, a light and joyous sleep, 
Brother with brother, sleep, my boys, my life ; 
Blest in your slumber, in your waking blest. 

The music of the Greek is sweetened by the -n-aprjxrjo-i'Sf or 
internal echoes, that produce something like a ripple of melody 
in each line. 

euSer*, ifxa Pp4<p€a, yXvKcpbv Kal iy4p(riiiJL0V vtpov, 
evSer', ifjt.ii, ^vx<^, Su' ddeKcpedb, eijcroa riKva, 
6\^ioL eivd^oLcrde, Kal 6\j8tot dw iKoiade, 

The question by whom was rhyme first brought to a regular 
system is one of some historical interest. It is certain that 
rhyme is not of Anglo-Saxon origin. During the five hundred 
years that closely preceded the Norman Conquest, many bards 
appeared in England, and wrote both in Latin and Anglo- 
Saxon; but the rhyming feature was absent from all their 
songs. 

Rhyme must have been imported into England with that large 
importation of French words and other French refinements and 
luxuries that crossed the channel, after the Norman Conquest, in 
1066. Its origin is therefore to be looked for on the continent. 
In the age of Charlemagne, previous to the Norman Conquest, 
there lived in France a class of elegant versemakers called 



260 OLD GREEK 

Troubadours. They earned their living and their fame, as 
Homer had done before them, by composing love songs and 
war songs. They recited these in the streets, at private ban- 
quets, and before public assemblies. 

Thus the language and life of the Provencals was lyrical in 
the highest degree. Their language was called Romantic or 
Romanesque, because of Roman or Latin origin. Their works 
were called Romanesque for the same reason. As these works 
were mostly fictions, the term "romance" came thus to be 
applied to fictitious works. These Troubadours, using the 
Romantic tongue, adopted rhyme as a fixed feature of all their 
poetical efforts. Yet the invention and first use of rhyme are 
still older than Charlemagne, and older than the Troubadours. 

We must carry our research back to the Latin language on 
its native soil. This Latin language we shall find to be rich in 
materials for rhyme, although Roman poets of the Augustan 
age chose to rely on the Greek rhythm and the oriental afflu- 
ence for the main charm and enrichment of their verses. The 
Roman poets found their supreme standard of excellence in 
culture and letters at Athens. Virgil and Horace modeled 
their verses after the masterpieces of Homer, Theocritus, and 
Pindar. The measures used by the Roman poets were not 
indigenous to the Ausonian soil. These measures were first 
planted in Italy when captive Greece reconquered her rude 
victor by introducing the Attic arts into rustic Latium. 

* * * It is safe to say that the rhyme in the sacred Latin 
poetry of the Middle Ages is not so much a new invention 
as the renaissance of a feature that characterized the earliest 
poetry of Latium. The Greek sentiment that held sway in 
Rome's Augustan age had displaced rhyme as a relic of Auso- 
nian rusticity. To Horace, Virgil, and Ovid rhyme was banal. 
The irruption of barbarians from the north introduced new ele- 
ments into the life and literature of Rome. The Greek stand- 
ards of culture and criticism were thrown down and desecrated. 
And it is curious to see how rhyme reasserts itself, when the 
cause of its suppression no longer operates. 

During the third and fourth centuries the rhymes of sacred 



GREEK SCHOLAR 26 1 

Latin poetry are mere vowel assonances, with the consonants 
disregarded or slurred, as they would be in Spanish poetry. In 
the seventh century, the tendency to accentual rhythm and 
perfect rhyme grows more decided. During the twelfth cen- 
tury it reached its culmination in couplets ending with uniform 
rhymes of one or two or three syllables. 

Among the finest samples of Latin rhyme is the well-known 
" Dies Irse," or Judgment Hymn, which forms a part of the 
Romish service for the dead. This is supposed to have been 
written by Tomaso de Celano, about the year 1250, nearly 
two hundred years after rhyme was first used by British poets. 
The startling imagery of the "Dies Ir3e"is drawn out with a 
quaint, almost barbaric simplicity, yet it owns a touching 
beauty and pathos which few hearts are hard enough to resist. 
There is a mystic power in its rhyme and rhythm that stirs the 
hearer's soul, even if he be ignorant of Latin. 

It points, as with the shadows of a setting sun, to triumphs 
never achieved, and to garlands left ungathered, with which 
Virgil and Horace might have enriched their fame and their 
land's literature, had they fully understood and practically illus- 
trated the musical capabilities of their mother tongue. 

* * * Without doubt the genuine inspiration of the poet is 
often betrayed in the rhythmic movement of his periods, as 
Virgil's goddess of beauty was known by her gait, vera incessu 
patuit dea. 

Yet in modern poetry this rhythmic expression seldom bursts 
into the perfect, fragrant blossom of exuberant song without 
the aid of rhyme. Admit that a poem without rhyme can satisfy 
all the conditions and exactions of classical beauty ; admit that 
it has a certain knightly stateliness well suited to epic themes ; 
admit that it rejoices in more of apparent freedom and vigor ; 
and it may still be true that rhyme would add to its power of 
giving pleasure, of juggling with reluctant sympathies, of kin- 
dhng enthusiasm, of deepening emotion, and of burning itself in 
the memory. 

We may frankly allow that the Greek poetry of the age of 
Pericles, with all its ingenious mechanism and wealth of sculp- 



262 OLD GREEK 

turesque beauty, is apt to be objective, unimpassioned, and 
cold. You admire the skill of the poet, yet the inspiration of 
the poem fails often to capture you. You see the poet's moving 
pageant as in a glass darkly. This coldness, this want of power 
to capture the feeHngs, may be owing partly to the absence of 
rhyme. The Romanesque poetry is fervid and inspiring. This 
contagious fervor may be owing in part to the witchery of 
rhyme. 

In his preface to the second edition of " Paradise Lost," 
Milton speaks slightingly of rhyme. He calls it " a troublesome 
and modern bondage," " the invention of a barbarous age to 
set off wretched matter and lame meter." It is not a Hght thing 
to arraign the author of " L' Allegro " as an incompetent critic, 
when his own skill as an artist in words is so unquestioned. 
But this disparaging opinion, given as it was for a special 
purpose, under the pressure of irritating criticism, ought not to 
be forced into an application too general and sweeping. A 
mercenary pubHsher had told Milton that his " Paradise Lost " 
was not appreciated, was slow at selling, and threatened to 
become a drug on the market because it was written in blank 
verse. 

Milton wanted to remove this popular prejudice against the 
severe simpUcity of the classic model he had chosen for his 
epic. So Milton spoke slightingly of rhyme as " a troublesome 
and modem bondage." 

The fact that such a defense was called out will satisfy some 
minds, if not all minds, that the Romanesque type of poetry, 
as used by the Troubadours of Provence, is better fitted for 
immediate and universal effect than the classic or Hebraic. If 
the only business of poetry were simply to reach the heart, 
make itself felt, and win the popular favor, blank verse would 
stand condemned by its own history. 

Let any gifted elocutionist read to an ordinary assemblage, 
first Milton's " L' Allegro," and then an equal amount of 
" Paradise Lost " ; where the heavy unrhymed heroics compel 
a cold, subdued, intellectual admiration, the waltzing, jubilant, 
trochaic rhymes will kindle a hearty enthusiasm. Hearers will 



GREEK SCHOLAR 263 

languidly admit that the unrhymed heroics are majestic, sublime, 
impressive. Their eyes and looks, if not their hands and feet, 
will testify that the trochaics are beautiful, brilHant, inspiring. 
After the blank verse, hearers will draw a long breath, with the 
sad feeling that they have suddenly grown old. After the 
rhymes they will brush aside tears of delight from eyes to which 
alUife is rose-tinted. 

The memory of "Paradise Lost" may suggest a faultless 
Greek temple, transported from Athens to Labrador and hung 
about with glittering icicles. 

The memory of " L'Allegro " may remind you of a social stroll 
in June, through a wilderness of roses, when the air was laden 
with fragrance and tremulous with bees and birds and katy- 
dids : 

While the plowman near at hand 

Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 

And the mower whets his scythe, 

And every shepherd tells his tale 

Under the hawthorn in the dale. 



CHAPTER IX 

WRITER AND LECTURER 

A Master of the English Language — Poet — Essayist — 
Lyceum Lecturer — List of Doctor North's Lectures — 
The Building of a Tragedy — The Old Greek Lexicon. 

One of Doctor North's graduate eulogists writes that 
the potency of his influence as a teacher '' was largely 
due to his power of English expression." Another 
writes that " his lectures live in the memory of his stu- 
dents as prose poems." Doctor Edward Orton, '48, in his 
half-century annalist's letter, says that " the translations 
Professor North gave, from time to time, were to me 
a great inspiration; I learned from them that just the 
right English word could be found to translate a partic- 
ular Greek word, and that the quest was worth making." 
Still another writes, " The richness and delicacy of the 
Greek has colored his own speech, making his mastery 
of the English rare and poetical." Professor Hopkins 
wrote : " In Professor North the power of imagination 
and of poetic expression is highly developed. His style 
of composition in prose has an indefinable element of 
music and rhythm." 

These tributes to Doctor North's command of lan- 
guage are borne out by his writings, whether in corre- 
spondence, lecture, poem, or occasional address. His 
style was ornate ; often picturesque and epigrammatic ; 
always clear and to the point. He never wasted his 
words. This characteristic was strikingly illustrated in 
his letter writing. Among hundreds of letters from his 

264 



WRITER AND LECTURER 265 

pen which the writer has seen, rarely is there one ex- 
ceeding two pages of note paper in length ; yet they all 
seem to say all that is necessary. Mr. C. W. Bardeen 
of Syracuse, New York, writes, " I never received a 
letter from Doctor North which had not a flavor of its 
own ; there was always a twinkle in his letters as well 
as in his eye." 

His felicity in expressing the thought which best met 
the occasion is illustrated in this letter, written at the 
time of the death of his intimate friend. Rev. Dr. 
Ebenezer Dodge, for many years president of a neigh- 
boring college, formerly Madison, now Colgate Uni- 
versity, at Hamilton, New York : 

January 7, 1890. 

My dear Doctor Andrews : To have enjoyed the friendship 
of President Dodge for twenty-five years becomes for me a 
precious memory, now that his earthly work is ended, and his 
unfettered nobility of character receives its due recognition. 
Did ever a man live in a position so trying and responsible, 
who was so free from the common infirmities of temper and 
habit? Rarely do we find, either in books or in our daily life, 
such profound learning, with never a trace of pedantry or 
pride, such unselfish, transparent heroism, such large-hearted, 
earnest consecration to truth and duty, such unbroken sun- 
shine of cheerfulness and anchored faith, even when well-laid 
plans were thwarted and fruitless. 

Happy is the institution whose officers and students have 
before them — henceforth in blessed memory — such a grand 
and beautiful model of Christian character. 

In heartfelt sorrow, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Edward North. 

Two other letters have been reproduced in facsimile 
in order to convey an idea of the personality which his 
chirography emphasized. One of these letters addressed 
to Judge Charles H. Truax, of the New York Supreme 



266 OLD GREEK 

Court, is given as an illustration of a phase of his 
scholarship, and of the generous freedom with which he 
placed his knowledge at the disposal of others. This 
letter is one of many dozens, more or less like it, in a 
correspondence which sprang up between Doctor North 
and Judge Truax, shortly after the latter's graduation in 
1867, and continued till near the former's death — a cor- 
respondence which reveals the warm personal friend- 
ship inspired by a mutual enthusiasm in the study of 
Greek prosody. Judge Truax was as zealous in his 
postgraduate Greek studies as in his habit of ransacking 
the antiquarian book shops of New York for rare edi- 
tions of the classical authors. Package after package, 
year after year, of rare and valuable books found its 
way to the professor's study through the generous 
friendship of his student admirer, until the collection 
became so large that on Doctor North's suggestion a 
part of it became the nucleus of what is now the Truax 
Classical Alcove in the college library. 

Doctor North kept up through many years a regu- 
lar correspondence, equally intimate and characteristic, 
with many of the Hamilton men to whom he was 
especially drawn. 

Edward North began to make rhymes when a college 
boy, and continued to make them all through life. The 
only member of the faculty who possessed this gift, he 
was constantly called upon to write alumni songs and 
poems for special occasions, and responded with a 
cheerfulness which showed that he found joy in the 
doing of it. Among these contributions were the hymns 
sung at the inauguration of three of the college presi- 
dents. There was more or less of hack work about this 
rhyming to order ; and mere facility and felicity in 
rhyming do not make a poet. But Doctor North was 
something more than a mere rhymer. All the habits 








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WRITER AND LECTURER 267 

of his mind tended to develop the poetic instinct. He 
had what may be called the technical equipment of the 
poet, highly developed and trained by years of reading, 
study, and practice. His prose moved forward with the 
rhythmical cadence of a master of prosody, perfectly 
familiar with the stately meters of the classics. Many 
paragraphs of his lectures read as if written to be 
scanned. 

That he once had it in his mind to publish a few 
of his fugitive poems, is indicated by a memorandum 
accompanying a list of twenty-five or thirty of these 
verses, found in the farthest recesses of a dark closet. 
It bears no date, but was written more than thirty years 
ago ; it is characteristically entitled 

An Apology 

As the rhymes in this little book have no merchantable quality, 
and are not published, some one may ask. Why are they 
printed ? It may look like an odd and unworthy motive, but 
it is true that they are printed to get rid of them. Neglected 
children of a brain always busy with prosaic, urgent duties — 
some of them hitherto unacknowledged — they have lurked for 
years in secret drawers, plethoric scrapbooks, and dusty hiding 
places. Sometimes they have unexpectedly confronted their 
author, and recalling the gladness or sadness of other days, 
have seemed to ask with dumb orphan pathos, how long they 
must wait for recognition or a decent burial place ! 

This little unpublished book is a private cemetery. There 
let the unhoused rhyme waifs sleep the sleep that knows no 
waking ! 

Accepting Doctor North's judgment of these "un- 
housed rhyme waifs," they are left to the oblivion to 
which he consigned them. Enough of his poetry has 
been given in this story of his Hfe to enable the reader 



268 OLD GREEK 

to place his own estimate upon the quality of his 
rhymes. 

It was always a surprise to Doctor North's friends 
that he contributed so little to the current literature of 
his day. He had an arsenal of material, which would 
have found welcome in the magazines, or made books 
that would have paid their way, while extending his 
reputation as a scholar and thinker. 

At the most there can be found not more than three 
or four contributions to periodicals from his pen, and 
these were early in life. In the old " Knickerbocker 
Magazine " there is a paper on " The Women of Homer," 
signed " Dix quaedivi." Cushing's ** Initials and Pseu- 
donyms " gives •' Dix quaedivi " as the pseudonym of 
Edward North in his contributions to the " North Amer- 
ican Review " and the " Knickerbocker Magazine " ; so 
that on the few occasions when he published, he pre- 
ferred to do so anonymously. I used sometimes to ask 
him about this, and to urge him to seek a publisher ; 
and the answer was invariably a reference to some 
entirely foreign subject. When he did not want to talk 
about any particular matter, he had a quiet but effective 
method of preventing it. He would turn the subject in 
a manner so unexpected and whimsical, that the diver- 
sion was bound to be accepted. 

Doctor North's college duties were varied during 
his earlier service by frequent excursions for the de- 
livery of lectures throughout New York, New England, 
and the middle West. These were the years during 
which the lecture lyceum had its rise and great success. 
This generation has little conception how important and 
how useful a factor the lyceum was in the winter life 
of the smaller villages of the eastern community, before 
the days when the daily newspaper circulated widely. 
Isolated and remote, with few resources for social and 



WRITER AND LECTURER 269 

intellectual entertainment, the villagers looked forward 
to the weekly lecture in the lyceum course as an event 
not to be missed for any such trivial reason as bad 
weather. The courses consisted of ten or a dozen 
lectures ; and during a period of nearly twenty years, 
Doctor North's name appeared as frequently upon 
these lecture courses, throughout central New York par- 
ticularly, as that of any other lecturer. He preceded 
or followed such well-known men as Doctor Eliphalet 
Nott, Horace Greeley, James Parton, Park Benjamin, 
John B. Gough, Alfred B. Street, and others, most of 
whom won more fame and money out of their lecturing 
than Doctor North, but none of whom pursued it more 
assiduously or devotedly. 

In reading the newspaper notices so carefully clipped 
and scrapbooked by his devoted wife, I have been 
struck by the cordial and often enthusiastic reception 
given Doctor North on these lecture tours. It has 
seemed a little remarkable, in view of the fact that his 
topics were never selected to appeal to popular prejudice 
or the passing interest of the hour, and that he had 
none of the characteristics of the natural-born orator, 
and none of the stage tricks which catch the eyes of 
the groundlings. His voice was singularly melodious ; 
but it was not strong or penetrating; and he shunned 
the dramatic methods which are the ordinary accom- 
paniment of successful platform oratory. His manner 
was quiet, his gestures few, his voice seldom raised ; 
but there was a grace and charm about his speech which 
at once attracted his audience, and held it until the last 
word. 

There was a circular prepared for the use of lyceum 
committees which appears to have been sent them on 
application, in order that they might make their own 
choice of a lecture among the eight he offered them 



2/0 OLD GREEK 

during that particular winter. He gave them : " The 
Birth and Worth of Words," " Who are the Deadheads? " 
" The Scholarship of Shakespeare," '' The Women of 
Homer," " The Greek Drama," " American Scholar- 
ship," " Homer and Milton," and "The Teacher's Pro- 
fession" — not a list of subjects that appeals very 
strongly to a rural lecture committee ; but it indicates 
that Doctor North preferred subjects which appealed 
to the thoughtful and the scholarly, and accepted en- 
gagements on no other terms. He lectured not so 
much for the emolument he got, as for the help he 
might give by directing and upHfting the thought of 
his auditors. This view is justified by the terms on 
which he lectured. One entry in his diary indicates 
that he returned from a trip to western New York, 
which covered four lectures, with $60 as his earnings, 
plus his expenses, which may be put down as not more 
than ^25 a night. Even this sum was a not unwelcome 
addition to the ;^ 1,000 salary which the college paid him 
for over thirty years. 

His correspondence contains many records of the 
trials and hardships of this lecturing experience, with 
long stage journeys through drifts and storms, and 
nights spent in cold and cheerless hotels. One of these 
experiences he thus narrates : 

I am grateful that I stand to-night in the presence of those 
whom I know to be friends ; for I have need of your friendly 
sympathy and indulgence. On my way hither I had the ill 
luck to exchange baggage with another traveler, and my care- 
fully prepared annotations on "The Women of Homer," for 
aught I know, are on their way to the Salt Lake City. In 
place of them I have a beggarly collection of boots, bandanas, 
and shaving machinery, of no particular use to any one but 
their owner. Very likely this owner is just now swearing him- 
self into a state of perdition over the vexations of our mutual 



WRITER AND LECTURER 2/1 

robbery. My own embarrassment and vexation are increased 
by the fact that my lecture was freshly written, written too 
without any effort to fix it in memory. It was to be christened 
before this audience. I may not be successful in my effort to 
recall, even with such pencil tracks as I have hastily made. 
The skeleton I can easily recall, and give some rough specimens 
of the filling up. But many of the illustrations drawn from 
Homer, upon which much of the interest of such a lecture 
must depend, are now beyond my reacho 

Doctor North was a popular and successful lecturer, 
as is testified by constant calls to return to the same 
community. The introductory sentences of one of his 
lectures indicate his own modest estimate of his plat- 
form popularity : 

After the appointment for this evening had been made out 
by the lyceum committee, it occurred to me as a reminiscence 
more interesting to myself, doubtless, than to anybody else, 
that my first effort in the capacity of what is technically called 
a popular lecturer (in this case, lucus a non lucendo) was made 
thirteen years ago this very week and in this very house. In 
spite of the crudeness and lameness of that first endeavor, I 
have been invited here so frequently, that it would seem as if 
the ordinary list of motives to such invitations must have been 
exhausted long ago. The audience and the place have grown 
somewhat familiar, although death has thrown his shaft at shin- 
ing marks ; although the greedy West has drawn away much of 
mature strength and much of youthful promise \ although a new 
generation of thoughtful faces appears before me. 

Why I happen to be here just at this time, I can not well 
guess, unless it is to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary 
of an unpretending, unambitious lecturehood. Whatever else 
may be said amiss to-night, I am sure I can not go wrong in 
thanking my Vernon friends for their genuine, exhaustless 
kindness ; and in expressing the hope that the end of another 
baker's dozen of years will find their zeal for intellectual enter- 
tainments unabated, and much better rewarded. If thirteen 



2/2 OLD GREEK 

years hence, Vernon fails to furnish her own lectures, there 
will be another illustration of the proverb that " Shoemakers' 
wives go unshod, and bakers' children cry for bread." 

Doctor North wrote lectures for the love of writing 
them ; and in his earlier years he wrote them continu- 
ously, often half a dozen in a year. Later in Hfe he 
spent much time in rewriting or remodeling his earlier 
lectures, before repeating them to a college class or a pub- 
lic audience. In his journal for 1878 appears this entry : 

Read a lecture to the juniors on Sophocles. Never is the 
same lecture read without some addition or revision, that 
makes it apparently better than before. 

Many of these manuscripts are so interleaved and 
interlined that it is difficult to decipher and reconnect 
them. In his '* Index Rerum " is a list of ninety-four 
lectures, which he seems to have regarded as suitable 
for use in his later years. This list is indicative of the 
range of topics upon which he wrote : 

List of Doctor North's Lectures 

The Old Greek Lexicon. The Greatness of Little Things. 

Christ and Prometheus. The Scholarship of Shake- 

The Theater of Bacchus. speare. 

How to Study Greek. Our Mother Tongue. 

The Proverbs of the Greeks. The Character and Writings of 

The Greek House. Xenophon. 

Ancient and Modem Tragedy. College Reading. 

Homer and Hades : Were the Trees of Greece. 

Ancient Greeks Influenced by Quadripartite Compacts. 

Motives from the Future Life ? Characteristics of Demosthe- 

The Greek Idea of the State. nes's Eloquence. 

The " Agamemnon " of ^schy- The Greek Theater. 

lus. The " Antigone," as an Inter- 
How the Modern Drama Dif- pretation to the Burial Rites 

fers from that of the Greeks. of the Greeks. 



WRITER AND LECTURER 



273 



The Greek Doctrine of Pun- 
ning. 

The Women of Homer. 

Greek Slavery. 

The Orators of Homen 

The Theater as it Was and Is. 

The Garden. 

The SpelHng Reform. 

The Literature of the Future. 

The Building of Tragedy. 

Rhymes and Things. 

The Good of Life in College. 

The Birth and Worth of Words. 

Teachers and Teaching. 

American Scholarship. 

The Teacher's Sources of 
Power. 

History. 

John Eliot and his Bible. 

The Supreme Culture. 

When is a Man Educated ? 

Rhetorical Sympathy. 

Who are the Deadheads ? 

Demosthenes and his "De 
Corona." 

^schylus and the Greek 
Drama. 

Homer and Milton. 

Proclitics and Enclitics vs. 
Sonnets and Surds. 

Characteristics of Demosthenes. 

Greek Rhymes. 

Homer's Influence. 

Classical Studies. 

Journalism in Modern Greece. 

Career and Character of Sopho- 
cles. 



Temperance. 

Professions. 

Amusements. 

Tacitus and his History. 

Missions and Colleges. 

Home Missions. 

Philodendria. 

Translations. 

The Genius of the French 
Nation. 

The Dramatic Element in 
History. 

The "Electra" and the Ideal 
Drama. 

The Influence of Dramatic Ex- 
hibitions. 

The Uses of Music. 

Farm Life and its Discipline. 

The Proper Expression of a 
Rural Cemetery. 

Livy's Rank as a Historian. 

Taking Time to Teach, and 
Teaching for Eternity. 

The Greek Doctrine of Rhythm. 

The Proverbs of Theocritus. 

American Philarborists. 

Power and its Sources. 

School and College Grounds. 

The Homeric Proverbs. 

Greek Serfdom. 

The Use of the Blackboard in 
Teaching Greek. 

Greek Etymologies and Syno- 
nyms. 

The Recognition of the Bible 
among the Greeks and Ro- 
mans. 



274 OLD GREEK 

Naucratis. Numismatics, Ancient and 

The New Hellas, Modem. 

The Higher Law in Ancient The Sunday School as it Was 

and Modern Literature. and Is. 

Names, and What Is in Them. The Prytaneum, or the Greek 
Horoscope of the EngHsh Lan- Idea of a State. 

guage. The New Year's Ball of King 

Sources of Personal Power. George First [of Greece], 

Undergraduate Reading. Modern Greek Journalism. 

The Future of American Litera- The Culture of the Classics. 

ture. Science and the Bible. 

This list does not include at least thirty lectures, 
mostly of early date, which are found in his papers, 
and were chiefly prepared for use in the classroom. 

Doctor North's lectures reveal an almost perfect 
English style, a depth of learning and research, and a 
conception of human life and duty, which entitle them 
to high rank as models of platform literature, Reading 
them, one is reminded of Gifford's remark about Hume : 
" His taste was that of the Attics. So far as the genius 
of the two languages would permit, he had collected the 
very juice and flavor of their style and transfused them 
into his own." Doctor C. W. Bardeen, writing about 
Doctor North in his "School Bulletin," speaks of "the 
peculiarly Grecian type of his mental, not to say phys- 
ical organization and culture, realizing in his life and 
writings one's ideas of a modernized Athenian of the 
classical period ; the almost feminine delicacy and re- 
finement of his tastes and manners, and his genial 
though subdued vein of humor, which seldom speaks 
through the features, but finds expression in rich and 
sparkling quaintness of speech." 

His lectures are notable in that all of them, some- 
where in their course, enforce the lesson of Christian 
living, without sermonizing. Of all of them it can be 



WRITER AND LECTURER 2/5 

said that they lack, in reading, the indefinable some- 
thing which was imparted by Doctor North's person- 
ality as he delivered them. 

This chapter concludes with brief extracts from some 
of Doctor North's lectures, followed by two complete 
lectures that were popular with the college classes : 
" The Building of a Tragedy," which the boys used 
familiarly to call " The dancing-girl lecture," and ** The 
Old Greek Lexicon," which was Doctor North's fare- 
well word to his classes in Greek for twenty-five years. 

American ScHOLARsmp 

* * * With equal truth and emphasis, it may be said of Ameri- 
can scholarship, that it has attributes which clearly distinguish 
it from the scholarship of the old world. These distinguishing 
attributes, if my thoughts are not misled, are that American 
scholarship is practical, open to all, and earnest. It dares to 
deal, not simply with words, and idioms and dead books, but 
also with ideas and principles, with laws and with life. It cares 
less for the shadow than for the substance. It regards the pur- 
suit of learning, not altogether as an end, sufficient in itself; 
not as an elegant dilettanteism, but as a means of contributing 
to the real progress of society in all ennobling and refining 
arts, of sustaining and extending the sacred alliance of law and 
liberty, as a method of satisfying the actual and healthy needs 
of a cultivated nature. It is not a lazy house-dog — to use what 
Shakespeare calls a good, swift simile, though somewhat currish 
— it is not a lazy house-dog, chasing its own tail, merely for the 
inane sport of self-revolution, but rather a keen-scented hound, 
intent on appeasing the cravings of a mighty hunger. 

The influences that have fostered this quality of American 
scholarship, its practical earnestness and openness to all, are 
not hid from view. They are as easy to be discerned as the 
quality itself. The American scholar is surrounded and molded 
by institutions and influences widely different from those that 
mold and inspire the European. 



2/6 OLD GREEK 

Born beneath skies that have sheltered many ancestral 
generations, the European scholar is too often expected to 
aid in transmitting their habits of thought and action, with 
their standards of literature and art, to another generation, un- 
changed. If a child of fortune and noble birth, he is taught 
to pray, not so much that he may have an independent, daring, 
inquisitive, importunate spirit, as that he may meekly exhibit a 
double portion of the ancestral spirit. He is taught to be am- 
bitious, not so much that he may strike out new paths into 
truth's unknown territory, not so much that he may sublime 
existence by leaving new way marks on the sands of time, as 
that he may plant his own footsteps nicely and squarely and 
reverently in the footsteps of his fathers. Politically, the 
European is almost forced into sympathy with the Tite Bar- 
nacle family, described by Dickens, who had intermarried 
with a branch of the Stiltstalkings and superintended the 
Circumlocution Office. " How not to do it " is the first article 
of his political creed. To meditate an innovation upon settled 
usages and institutions is with him almost a treason and un- 
deniably a sacrilege. By a necessary indulgence, the European 
scholar is allowed to breathe and take his meals in the present 
tenses. He is expected to recruit his mind's vitality, and to 
expend his sympathy all in the past. The eyes of his intellect 
seem to be put behind, and to look more naturally at what has 
been than upon what is or what ought to be. 

The weapons of his mind, like Parthian shafts, have a trick 
of flying backward; and, unlike Parthian shafts, at objects 
dead, or imaginary, or far remote. Or you might call him a 
mental chrysalis. His study is walled about with rows of 
books and manuscripts reaching from floor to ceihng, and 
these form the casing of his imprisoned intellect. From this 
chrysaHd state he seldom emerges. Oftener he dies in the 
cocoon of his studiously spun abstractions, leaving it to the 
industry of other thinkers, and frequently they chance to be 
American thinkers, with more practical skill, to reel off" his 
convoluted thoughts, and weave them into useful merchandise. 

Is there a single product of American mind, that may not 



WRITER AND LECTURER 277 

be said to carry certain marks and qualities to distinguish it 
from European products of the same class ? Hardly one, I am 
sure, except in fields of research that are purely abstract and 
impersonal. As Hercules is known by his foot, so the intel- 
lectual giantry of the new world can not expose a single feature, 
without betraying the vigorous nutriment and inspiration of the 
soil, the air, and the history that sustain it. The brazen shield 
in which our infant Hercules was rocked, the full-grown hero 
has already carried through many a hard fight for the Union 
and the Constitution. * * * 

The Greek Idea of the Future State 

And what had the Greek to look forward to in the future? 
With Homer for his teacher, he was clearly taught to eat and 
drink, and make the most of this world. It can not be said 
that Homer represents this life as a season of trial and proba- 
tion. The idea of retribution is not clearly associated with 
Homer's doctrine of a future state. Nor does he teach that 
virtue is to have its final and complete reward, when the trials 
of this world are ended. In Homer's spirit world, Hfe was 
unreal and vapid. Hades was a joyless region where depraved 
souls lived over their earthly lives in endless and feeble itera- 
tion, with no new problems to solve, and with no new expe- 
riences of joy. The pure and the polluted, the brazen and the 
cowardly, the savage and the saintly, are mixed together in 
dreary confinement. All are moping and discontented, with 
nothing to do but to reenact old early scenes, in a kind of 
ghostly drama, and with eternity hanging heavy on their hands. 
On the whole, the sinners seem to have a less dismal destiny 
than such departed worthies as Achilles and Anticleia, the fond 
mother of Ulysses, both of whom are tortured with ceaseless 
longings for the friends they have left behind. 

It is true that more rational views of the future life were 
entertained by thoughtful Athenians in the time of Sophocles 
and Plato. Yet in nothing is the hoUowness of the Greek 
rehgion more apparent than in its inability to offer any antidote 
for the terrors of death, or any real equivalent for the loss of 



278 OLD GREEK 

this life's honors and pleasures. Even Socrates, with the in- 
spiration of a good genius to befriend him, tries to soften the 
bitterness of his judicial murder by dwelling on the fact that he 
had nearly exhausted this world's round of enjoyments, that he 
had reached that period of life, where the grasshopper becomes 
a burden and desires fail. 

The joy of meeting again departed friends, and of renewing 
the ties of earthly affection, seems to have been the highest joy 
that even a martyred maiden like Antigone could look for- 
ward to in the realm of Hades. In reading the inscriptions 
on Greek tombstones, one is pained at the aching absence of 
everything like a cheerful anticipation of happiness beyond 
the grave. The Chaeronean epitaph begins grandly by com- 
memorating the valor of heroes who died for fatherland, and 
coldly ends by saying that they shared the inevitable lot. No 
wonder the Athenians felt that their rehgion was a hollow 
farce, and confessed it by erecting an altar to the Unknown 
God. * * * 

Commencement Days 

To those of us who are blessed with a literary mother, her 
July anniversary comes like the sumptuous Panathenaea of the 
Greeks, whereat beauty, wit, eloquence, and song jewel the feet 
of the hours as they trip smilingly away. 

Ushered in with wreaths of roses and smell of tedded clover, 
sunny memories and gay-winged hopes unite at its festal gath- 
ering to welcome in new aspirants for the laurels of learning, 
and to cheer forward the scar-honored heroes of thought. In 
this christening time of youthful authors and orators, the neo- 
phyte in study, pleasantly exhilarated by the tinghng flavor of 
his first draught from Homer or Virgil, resolves to spend years 
in drinking deep at the Pierian spring of the world's Hterature. 
Here the unseasoned graduate, rash with the valor of inexpe- 
rience, and tired of looking at Hfe's battle through the loopholes 
of a studious retreat, pauses a httle within the call of chapel- 
going bell before he takes his place in surging, serried ranks. 

From out those surging ranks, the veteran scholar is glad to 
step, and to rest him for a week on the lap of the Gentle Mother, 



WRITER AND LECTURER 279 

where his armor was first buckled on. With his early aspirings 
tamed down by the shocks of reality, his hair whitened and 
brow furrowed with toils and cares, he is charmed thither by 
the spell of companionships long since sundered — never to be 
on earth reunited. He lingers fondly over the names of class- 
mates, transferred now from the annual catalogue, it may be 
to a nation's roll of renown ; it may be to sepulchral marble. 
Again and gratefully he seeks the quiet, idyl shadows of the old 
academic trees, whose cool baptism first awed him into love 
of lore. Now they help to calm the raging fever of the heart. 
Their leaves are still spicy with the fragrance of remembered 
joys. They still whisper of bygone rivalries, whose rewards 
were nutriment and grace to thinking ; of unenvious rivalries, 
which knit the hearts of friends together at a shrine of learning 
whither their longing thoughts have turned, like Persians to the 
East, from beneath each sky that sheltered them. 

The Orator and the Bookmaker 

A live book that goes everywhere has a more pervasive and 
permanent influence than a living speaker. Demosthenes on 
the bema was heard by a few thousands. Demosthenes in a 
book has been the study of scholars for centuries. 

The orator's dignity and joy of privilege, the orator's domin- 
ion and majesty of influence, dwindle well-nigh to insignifi- 
cance when we try to measure the undying kingship of one 
who contributes to the enduring monuments of his country's 
literature. Horace saw in his completed poems a monument 
more lasting than brass, to be admired " so long as the priest 
shall ascend the capitol" ; but the poet's vision was not long 
enough to see that centuries after the Roman capitol had 
become a ruin, his odes would be the study and dehght of a 
distant continent then unknown. 

A vital truth once uttered in a live book is like a star that 
circles in its placid round, undisturbed by all the tumults of 
earth. The spoken word dies in the effort to transfer its life 
to the listener's memory ; the printed word lives in undecay- 
ing vigor on the permanent page. The printed word and the 



280 OLD GREEK 

spoken word are both potent instruments for good or for evil. 
But as often as the spoken word wings its way to a hundred 
hearts, the printed word stamps its impress on a thousand. 
The spoken word reaches but a little way ; then it vanishes. 
The printed word takes to itself the pinions of the morning, 
and flies to the uttermost parts of the earth. 

In our day the orator is constantly engaged in a trial of 
strength with the printing press, and the contest is not equal. 
The printing press is a Briareus, with a hundred hands that 
never tire and a hundred throats all ignorant of bronchitis. 

There is no exaggeration in saying that the published epistles 
of Paul, the apostle, have exerted a trillionfold more influence 
than his unrecorded addresses. This may have been a part of 
Paul's inspired meaning when he says that " letters are weighty 
and powerful, but bodily presence is weak, and speech con- 
temptible." 

The translators have narrowed this statement into a confes- 
sion of Paul's personal infirmity, by putting in possibilities not 
to be found in the original Greek, so as to make it read " his 
letters (say they) are weighty and powerful ; but his bodily 
presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." Paul may 
have intended to utter the larger truth, that all speech is of 
small worth when compared with the undying authority of re- 
corded thought. So the enemies of Bunyan thought to restrain 
his influence by surrounding him with the waUs of a dungeon. 
Bunyan said to himself, if I can not tell my thoughts to the men 
of my time, I will write them down for all who come after me. 
And the " Pilgrim's Progress " was bequeathed to the centuries. 
Bunyan's power was multiplied and made permanent by the 
efforts of his enemies to cripple it. 

The Study of Greek by Women 

There is a peculiar significance in the fact that nearly four- 
fifths of the graduates from our normal schools are young 
ladies. There is the same predominance of female teachers in 
our public schools. Whatever reasons may be assigned for it, 
this fact brings no alarm, but rather comfort and satisfaction, 



WRITER AND LECTURER 28 1 

and hope for the future. Women are well fitted for the work 
of teachers, and as a rule are more successful than men. The 
sunshine of kindness, tact, and patience are of higher value in 
the schoolroom than cold and blustering authority. 

The highest positions and rewards in the teacher's profession 
are open to women, whenever they make the same thorough 
preparation that is made by men. Here is an inviting field of 
honorable and remunerative usefulness that calls for no consti- 
tutional amendment and no change of public opinion. It is 
the testimony of one long connected with our educational 
affairs that the greatest want now felt in our schools is the 
want of female teachers who are thoroughly qualified for giving 
instruction in the higher branches. 

I am not using my own language, but that of one who has 
better opportunities for knowing, when I say that, " if women 
would spend more time in making solid attainments, and less 
time in berating the public and demanding their rights, they 
would secure better things than they now hope for." Many 
living examples might be given, all the more beautiful for their 
modesty, which most effectively demonstrate that in the 
teacher's profession the same native gifts and the same scholarly 
attainments will gain the higher positions and rewards more 
readily for a woman than for a man. 

We read of one woman, herself a teacher not unknown to 
fame, who is " amazed and indignant to hear this outcry for a 
wider sphere and greater opportunities for women, while her 
sphere is already a thousand times wider than she spans, and 
her opportunities a thousandfold greater than she has ever 
attempted to measure." 

In many of our institutions for young ladies the study of the 
Greek language is too much neglected. The reason for this 
neglect, with so much time given to music and the higher 
mathematics, is not fully apparent. Any argument for retain- 
ing the Greek in our colleges for young men is equally an 
argument for its study in our female colleges. Many of our 
educated women are bookmakers, editors, writers for magazines, 
teachers, leaders in society, shapers of public opinion; and a 



282 OLD GREEK 

knowledge of Greek would help them to a more effective 
mastery and use of our mother tongue. As a disciplinary 
exercise, the study of Greek is eminently fitted to strengthen 
the memory and ripen the judgment ; to sharpen the discern- 
ment and quicken the imagination; to refine the taste and 
awaken the perception of harmony and beauty. 

In cultivating the faculty for enjoying and producing the 
beautiful in art, in literature, and in hfe, a cultivation to which 
the gentler half of humanity is especially summoned, we are 
still disciples of the old Greeks, and may expect to remain 
their disciples to the world's end. If educated women are 
our best teachers of the beautiful in language, action, and 
character, and if a sense of the beautiful is best cultivated by 
mastering the Greek, why should not Homer and ^schylus and 
Sophocles be faithfully read in our female colleges and semi- 
naries, along with Goethe and Racine and Shakespeare ? When 
the intellectual power and wealth of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
are so universally admired, is it not singular that so few of her 
sex should be encouraged to enter upon that course of Greek 
study which nursed her native gifts to their consummate flower- 
ing and golden fruitage ? 

One of the lectures which always pleased the students, 
and which they were wont to describe as " The dancing- 
girl lecture," was entitled '* The Building of a Tragedy." 
It is a narrative which combines facts and dates with 
plausible fiction, after the manner of Barthelemy's 
'* Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece," or 
Becker's " Charicles," in order to outline the wonderful 
evolution of the ^Eschylean drama from the clumsy cart- 
shows of Thespis, in a setting that recognizes what was 
peculiar to the ancient Greeks in climate, language, 
religion, local traditions, and political institutions. 

The Building of a Tragedy 

For our starting point we will in thought travel back east- 
wardly some twenty-four centuries, until we happen upon a 



WRITER AND LECTURER 283 

sunny afternoon in the early springtime of Attica, in the year 
515 B.C. We find ourselves strolHng through the quiet streets 
of Eleusis, famous home of the Eleusinian mysteries, a pleasant 
seacoast town, twelve miles northwest of Athens, and closely 
connected with Athens by the 6Bb<s Upd, or Sacred Way. Turn- 
ing a street corner, we come suddenly upon a procession of 
itinerant Thespians, under the lead of an enterprising prototype 
of the twentieth century showman. 

The players ride into town on elevated seats, in a vehicle 
called a a/xaia gaudily painted, and drawn by mules decorated 
as to their ears with colored streamers and tinkling cymbals. 
Doorways are brightened by eager children's faces, as the sounds 
of pipe and trumpet penetrate the shops and dweUings that 
line the streets of Eleusis. Nimble boys twist themselves about 
the statues of Wayside Hermes, and Apollo Aguieus, peering 
through the Winding dust, and wondering what is to happen. 
The players, the mimers, the dancers, the teamsters, are robed 
in grotesque or emblematic costumes, that call forth shouts, 
laughter, and voices of impatient question from the thickening 
rabble, as it presses toward the public square and the temple of 
Demeter. 

Here, in the wide agora, the players quickly transform their 
long wagon into an extempore stage by stretching across it 
matched boards brought with them for this purpose. In less 
than an hour the broad market place is inundated with me- 
chanics, shopkeepers, vine dressers, rollicking boatmen, chronic 
idlers, proletaires, pedagogues looking after truant schoolboys, 
with undomestic women and priests, with slaves, aliens, and 
freedmen, closely packed. There is a swaying sea of upturned 
faces. There are signs of impatience, and the town jester is 
called upon for a new edition of his famihar mimicry. A vig- 
orous rattling of obols, drachmas, minas, and fallacious keys 
proclaims that a right jolly entertainment will be handsomely 
paid for. 

The first performer on the wagon stage is an uncombed, 
dithyrambic singer, whose rude songs are tied together with 
ruder Joe Millerisms, having an ancient and fishy flavor. The 



284 OLD GREEK 

second performer is a mute bizarrely costumed, to represent 
a grinning satyr. There is much laughter as the satyr tumbles 
through his coarse parody of a Bacchanal dance, with hirsute 
features, leering, gooseberry eyes, pointed ears, arms clumsily 
dangling, and cloven goat's feet. Next after this a pair of 
ambitious players, in a half circle of Homeric long-haired 
warriors, dramatize the " Flogging of Thersites." Ulysses, the 
ever ready, song-honored, the original Semper-Paratus, is a 
favorite personator. 

He is told to lay it on thick and slap. The audience ap- 
plaud right heartily when they see the deformed blackguard, 
the ugliest recruit that went to Troy, cower and quiver under 
the blows of the golden scepter of Ulysses. Thersites has a 
helpless look of comical sheepishness as he mops away big, 
booby tears from his painted cheeks. It is clear that the 
Eleusinians believe in summary punishment for scandal and 
backbiting. 

Finally, after a splurge of instrumental noise, the stage is 
cleared for a dancing girl from Corinth. She has ruddy cheeks, 
and her eyehds droop. Her long black hair is twisted into 
shining coils. She wears a very brief skirt, fringed with silver 
bells. 

Beside her stands the brisk manager, wreathed with mer- 
cenary smiles, holding on his arm a dozen polished hoops. 
When the Corinthian danseuse begins her rhythmical move- 
ments, she receives the pohshed hoops from the manager, one 
after another, up to a dozen, and with no break in the wanton 
play of her feet she sends the hoops whirling through the air 
above her head. There is no coUiding of one hoop with another. 
Each hoop is easily caught in its fall by the nimble Corinthian, 
and tossed whirling through the air again. The crowd is almost 
breathless with wonder and admiration. It looks to them as 
if a shower of gleaming, squirming snakes were raining from 
the sky. 

This business over and duly applauded, a larger and stouter 
hoop, an iron hoop, set round with thick, upright swords, is 
planted on the stage. The dancing girl now begins to throw 



WRITER AND LECTURER 285 

somersaults into this circle of upright swords. Every time 
she lands upon her feet squarely, without apparent effort, and 
tosses herself back again rapidly, gracefully, rhythmically, and 
with no signs of fear. At the end of this perilous feat the air 
is torn with shouts of admiration. Hundreds of hands are 
beating applause. The Corinthian girl seizes a tambourine, 
and, leaping into the crowd, solicits pay for her performance 
with coaxing smiles and coquettish appeals. She had touched 
a responsive chord in the popular heart of Eleusis, and pockets 
are freely emptied. 

Leaning against a gnarled old olive tree that throws its 
lengthening shadow across the market place, toward the 
temple of Ceres, is a youth of fifteen untroubled summers. 
He is wholly absorbed in the novel scene before him. To 
him the sports of the day are freighted with prophetic intima- 
tions. His keen eye, made keener by loving converse with 
Homer, pierces beyond the gayly painted wagon, beyond the 
coarse, mercenary mimers and the excited rabble, as if he 
would read and interpret a mysterious message, written in 
cypher — a message meant for him alone — on the blue scroll 
of the far-away, overarching sky. 

Thus the boy gazes, in solemn reverie, with his eupatrid 
blood all in a fever, until the dancing girl touches his arm 
with her tambourine. The half laugh that rallies him to his 
generosity has a moistened tone, as if it had usurped the place 
of tears and maidenly reluctance. 

" I am afraid you are not well pleased with our poor show 
to-day." The lad's reply was made deliberately, and empha- 
sized with a handful of obols and drachmas. *' I like it well, 
Maid of Corinth. So well I like it that I do wish it were better. 
If your thoughts are half as nimble as your heels, you can guess 
what that means." 

Without longer waiting, the boy hurries home and throws 
himself upon a rustic seat in his father's garden. Southward 
the garden overlooks the crags of Salamis and the Saronic 
gulf, whose shimmering waters are flecked with ships of com- 
merce and holiday yachts, making for the neighboring harbor 



286 OLD G.IEEK 

of Piraeus. In the watery distance ^gina can be seen. The 
island is pinnacled with costly, solemn temples, and richly gar- 
mented with vineyards, olive groves, and orange orchards. At 
the southeastern end of the Sacred Way, running spirally toward 
Athens, rises the AcropoHs, like an awful Omnipresence under 
a canopy of intensest blue, with Hymettus for its background, 
and Lycabettus for a bodyguard. 

Not far away from the rustic seat a marble image of Dionysus 
guards the entrance to a spacious field, where well-fed slaves 
whistle snatches of dithyramb over their weeding and pruning ; 

where 

The sun with mouth all golden blows 

Blue bubbles of grapes down the vineyard rows. 

The boy's feet press the close-cut velvet turf, on which shift- 
ing, tremulous mosaic is wrought by the sinking sun, as it sifts 
through the leaves of olive, pomegranate, fig tree, and platane. 
Near by two women slaves are grinding wheat in a tedious 
hand mill. Their plaintive song recalls for them the days of 
their free, glad girlhood on the Orontes, and softens the discord 
of the grinding into a welcome lullaby. 

Weary with the afternoon's excitements, heated with walk- 
ing, oppressed with the strangeness of the new thoughts that 
crowd upon his brain, numbed into quiet by the cicada's 
monotone, the boy falls asleep. 

In his dream he stands near a mountain that slopes down- 
ward to a boundless prairie. So gentle is the slope it is 
hard to tell where the hill ends and where the plain begins. 
As he looks about him, his eye rests on a statue of Dionysus. 
Suddenly the statue warms into life. The vine god steps 
down from his pedestal. He unbinds a laurel wreath firom his 
own forehead and puts it on the head of the boy. Then he 
places in his hands a roll of papyrus, with a smile that is itself 
both an inspiration and a mandate. 

"My son, be thou a writer of tragedy." The vine god 
returns to his pedestal, and freezes back to marble, with his 
lifted hand pointing to a clear rivulet that starts from the 
earth at the feet of the youth. This clear bubbling rivulet 



WRITER AND LECTURER 287 

goes singing down the hillside, broadening and deepening and 
gathering new music as it descends, and cleaving the meadows 
below with gUttering curves 

As if Diana in her dreams 
Had dropt her silver bow. 

While the dreamer dreams and gazes with eyes that drink their 
fill of gladness, spreading trees, laden with perennial flowers 
and fruits, spring up on either bank of the stream. Birds 
with brilliant wings select their mates, build their nests, and 
sing their valentines. The clear-voiced nightingale tells her 
sorrows. Temples of worship and freedom and historic monu- 
ments shape themselves, as by magic, from the rough stones 
that break the flowing water ^ into music. Artists sit in the 
shadow of the trees and dip their pencils in the stream. 
Orators come there to quench their thirst. Statesmen are 
there inspired to kindle in oppressed peoples the love for free- 
dom and self-empire. Poets of all tongues are there from dis- 
tant lands. They press upward in a long procession, each eager 
for a deeper draught at the fountain head. Virgil is there, a 
reverent pupil, grateful for thoughts and rhythms that shall 
shape the world's purest culture. The daring Dante is there, 
pluming his fancy for some loftier flight or some deeper plunge. 
Shakespeare is there, adding new and picturesque facets to his 
many-sidedness. John Milton is there: "Samson Agonistes," 
"Comus" and "Paradise Lost" will explain why he is there. 
Rare Ben Jonson is there, a diver diving for pearls, and Samuel 
Johnson simpling for dictionary roots along the waterside. 
Byron and Shelley are there, converting the sweetest wine into 
the sharpest vinegar. Macaulay is there, busily plying his 
memory's instantaneous photography. Goethe is there, with a 
cold, curious wisdom, botanizing on the graves of betrayed 
innocence. Edgar Allan Poe is there, finding a new name for 
the spirit of poetry. 

And neither the angels in heaven above 
Nor the demons down under the sea 
Shall ever dissever his soul from the soul 
Of his beautiful ideal. 



288 OLD GREEK 

Tennyson is there, rejoicing in the upper atmosphere of idyl 

song, while 

The viewless arrows of his muse 
Are headed and winged with flame. 

Longfellow is there, and 

His song, from beginning to end, 

Is found at last in the heart of a friend. 

Shelley and Keats are there. 

As in the soft and sweet eclipse 
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips. 

George Flaxman is there, 

Like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken. 

Hiram Powers is there, and with him Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
to interpret the 

Thunders of white silence 

that appeal from the Greek Slave in marble against man's 
greatest wrong. Michael Angelo and Canova are there, with 
deft hands plastic to embody the inner vision. 

Finally a dancing girl gayly springs from bank to bank, 
shakes a gainful tambourine ; then pirouettes in the air with 
twinkling feet, and lighting in a shallop that suddenly appears 
on the water, she ghdes across the meadow on the river's 
glittering curves and vanishes in a golden mist. 

The young eupatrid dreamer of Eleusis awakes, with a vow 
already made and recorded on his heart's tablet, that he will 
follow the vine god's bidding, and be a writer of tragedy ; that 
he will do his best to make his eupatrid name as dear to Attica 
as the glory and freedom of Attica are dear to his countrymen ; 
that he will struggle for a distinction, the latchet of whose shoes 
the power and wealth of Athens shall be glad to stoop down 
and unloose. 

It were useless trying to tell how the callow wings of the 
young dramatist faltered and ached for weariness in the upper 
air of high invention ; how he dreamed and brooded over the 



WRITER AND LECTURER 289 

firstlings of his tragic muse ; how he toiled through the long 
day, and when the long night came kept on toihng; how 
Homer and Hesiod, Simonides and Sappho, were rummaged 
for plot and character, for incident and pathos, for myth and 
legend, for rhythm and epithet, for sentiment and inspiration ; 
how he shunned the haunts of pleasure seekers, and sought a 
larger society in the pathless woods and on the lonely shore ; 
how eagerly he listened when the priests of Ceres unfolded their 
treasures of traditionary lore ; how he made m.ysterious pil- 
grimages to Athens, and lingered by moonhght in the shadows 
of the Theater and the Academy, the Areopagus, the Pnyx and 
the Agora ; how his study lamp rivaled that of the Prytaneum, 
while he was reading and pondering, writing and rewriting. 

At last the maiden tragedy is completed. With much mis- 
giving it is handed in for criticism. Through the kindly offices 
of partial friends it is accepted by the presiding Archon of 
Athens, and set down for competition with long-practiced and 
favorite dramatists. Then follow the choice of a choragus, the 
organizing and costuming of the chorus, the jealousies and 
vexing details of rehearsal. The excitement of the contest fills 
the old wooden theater of Athens with such a crowd as it had 
never held before. There is no slowness to see and hail what 
is good of the new tragedy, although there are certain veteran 
critics, with toughened sensibilities, whose commendations are 
dealt out with significant shrugging of the shoulders, at the 
stilted phrases which partially overshadow its mountain peaks 
of merit. 

The competing plays are ended. An interval of painful 
silence follows, while the judges retire to make up their verdict. 
The young dramatist sits with a weary face, in one of the side 
rooms that flank the stage. As he looks out upon the mute, 
impatient audience, his heart is going through an agony all the 
greater because it is voiceless. He can feel his heart's hammer- 
ing in his ears. He thinks he is alone. But a tablet drops 
into his lap, how or whence he can not guess. Some unknown, 
friendly critic says to him in Attic phrase : " Don't be disheart- 
ened. I Hke it because it is better, and a promise of coming 



290 OLD GREEK 

triumphs." His unuttered response is, " No prize for me 
to-day." 

At this moment the five judges appear on the stage from an 
opposite saloon. Ten thousand spectators bend forward, many 
rising from their seats, to catch the announcement, " First prize 
to Pratinas ; second prize to Choerilus." 

Before the award is fully proclaimed the main supports of 
the theater give way, with a frightful crash. Men, women and 
timbers, actors, benches and dancers, statues, musicians and 
balustrades, poUcemen, costumers and kettledrums, prompters, 
fig peddlers and slaves, priests, senators and foreign envoys, 
tumble together in confused, ghastly, and shrieking ruin. The 
unsuccessful dramatist forgets his own defeat in the larger dis- 
aster. In answer to a smothered call for help that comes up 
from beneath the stage, he finds the slave who had engineered 
the thunder machine, with his foot crushed by a fallen timber, 
his face livid with agony. "Ah, my loyal thunderer, this 
comes of presuming to rival the Olympian cloud compeller. 
You and I do get badly used to-day. Suppose I pry up that 
timber and set you free. Now that you are vulcan-footed you 
shall serve no owner but yourself. Henceforth be a freedman." 
" If you please," said the Arab, drawing out his crushed and 
bleeding foot, " I will work this same thunder machine till my 
master wins the first prize." "So much pluck for you is pluck 
for me also. I accept both the omen and the service." With 
this reply, the dramatist hires a couple of slaves to carry home 
the disabled thunderer. Himself follows soon after. 

As he hurries along the crowded streets, made sick at heart 
by the holiday bravery that decks them, shunning the recogni- 
tion of friends, shrinking from their proffered sympathy as so 
much refinement of torture, each of the ten years spent over 
that unlaureled tragedy comes back, like a gibbering ghost, to 
upbraid him with presumptuous daring, with overweening con- 
ceit, with misdirected energy, all wasted in aping the folly of 
Icarus. His heart has suddenly turned to lead. His form 
bends as with premature age. His eyes lose the lustrous long- 
ing of youth. It irks him to look at the soft sky, the dimpling 



WRITER AND LECTURER 29 1 

water, the green earth, the beckoning trees : only yesterday they 
were so full of sympathy and food for hope. 

He feels now as Robert Burns felt, centuries later, when he 
reproached nature with her mocking gladness : 

Ye banks and braes of Bonnie Doon, 
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair, 

How can ye sing, ye little birds, 
And I sae weary, fu' of care ? 

His notes and skeletons are brushed aside. They are hate- 
ful to his eyes. The statue of Dionysus, at the entrance to his 
father's vineyard, before this an inspiring presence, is now a 
sneering demon, with scorn on its lips. Who can suppose that 
a countenance so furrowed with study, so pinched with dis- 
appointment, so written over with despair, will ever again be 
lit with the radiance of exulting thought? Who can suppose 
that a form so bent and crouching will ever straighten itself 
into a commanding presence, and give the world assurance of 
a hero on the battlefield, a power in the study, a protagonist 
on the stage, a man every way? 

Twenty-five years have dawned and died since that Thespian 
hoUday at Eleusis. The last days are going in the summer of 
490 B.C. Athens, the eye of Greece, the home of pleasure, of 
intellect and art and untroubled leisure, is suddenly seized 
with consternation. The mimic agonies of the theater are 
forgotten in a genuine terror that fills and chills all hearts. A 
Krjpvi rides through the streets, shouting from a wet and panting 
horse that 500,000 Persians have landed at Marathon. The 
herald had counted 600 triremes, besides many transports for 
cavalry. 

They have already taken Eretria, have laid the city in ashes, 
have sent the inhabitants to Persia in chains. They have 
brought a shipload of fetters and handcuffs to Marathon. 
Hippias is there, that old enemy of Athens, lusting for a new 
lease of tyranny, and Hippias knows how to smite the Athenians 
between the joints of the harness. Who will go out to meet 
these bold invaders ? Who will punish their insolence by put- 



292 OLD GREEK 

ting shackles on the hands that bring them for Athenians? 
Who will carry the logic to convince the world that one free 
Greek is equal to fifty Persian conscripts ? A Krjpvi is hurried 
off to Sparta, begging for help. At Athens 10,000 volunteers 
rally under the command of ten generals, and start for 
Marathon. 

Even slaves are bribed to enlist with the promise of freedom, 
if they will only help to defend the freedom of their masters. 
Among other men of mark, whose example gives courage to 
timid souls, is the unlaureled eupatrid from Eleusis, who yearns 
now to do the one brave deed that shall put a solid bar of 
oblivion between the life that now is and the wretched life 
that was. Rejoiced at the opening of a new career, he takes 
his place in the ranks, among the Athenian hoplites, with 
his brother on one side and a slave with a crushed foot on the 
other side. A weary march of twenty-two miles, and the 
Greeks pitch their camp near the temple of Hercules. Barely 
a mile from their mighty foe, they are like David defying 
GoHath. Or, they are like an eagle nesting in the paw of a 
sleeping tiger. 

After nine days of patient waiting, the nestling eagle remem- 
bers its errand, stretches its wings, and with tough, sharp talons, 
with sharper beak, with wild outcry, fiercely assails the Persian 
tiger. The battle is desperate and bloody. At the center of 
the long line of Greeks, where the fight is thickest, the poet 
soldier keeps in the van. He is heedless that the air about 
him is alive and hissing with Persian arrows. He is pushing 
forward in advance of his comrades. He is leaning backward 
in the throwing of a javelin, when a nimble form, before un- 
noticed, suddenly leaps into the air, and lights upon the ground 
just before him, with a Persian arrow caught in a buckler. 

He is puzzled by the servile dress and the beardless face of 
his agile preserver, who checks him with a voice full of gen- 
tlest reproach. " Master is too reckless of his life to-day." 
"And you, my brave stripling, you should have kept away 
from such bloody work." " Oh, no, my good master, I like it 
here. 'Tis a real tragedy to-day, with freedom for the prize." 



WRITER AND LECTURER 293 

What was it in that weirdly tender voice that made the poet 
forget where he stood and what he was doing? What was it 
that quickened his heart beats, and sent his thoughts scamper- 
ing over the long, shadowy past — that peopled the air about 
him with the ghosts of buried hopes, that left him in doubt 
whether he was really in the body at Marathon, or out of the 
body in dreamland ? 

Without pause the battle rages. The two long lines wrestle 
like Titans tugging in deadly encounter. 

At length the Greek center is driven back toward the temple 
of Hercules, but the Persian advance is stubbornly contested, 
until the Persian wings suddenly break into a confused retreat. 
Then with ringing shouts, the Greek wings rush to the rescue 
of their center. The troops of Darius are driven in disorder 
to the shore. Thousands plunge into the swamps near by, only 
to find their inglorious graves. Others tumble into ships and 
push out into the bay. 

The Greeks set fire to a part of the Persian triremes that fringe 
the shore. They are wild with the joy of success, and forget 
their prudence. In the heat of their mad pursuit, Cynsegirus, 
a brother of the poet, plunges into the bay to overtake a re- 
treating galley. With one hand he holds a torch ; with the other 
grasps the stern of the trireme. His hand is quickly severed with 
a Persian scimeter. Falling back into the sea, he faints from 
loss of blood, and adds another to the fatal tally for the day. 
An Arab with a crushed foot brings ashore the mutilated body. 
At the close of the day, his ashes are consigned to a sacred 
mound thrown up over the one hundred and ninety-two Athe- 
nians who gave their lives to Greek glory, 

Where the mountains look on Marathon, 
And Marathon looks on the sea. 

There was an expression of poetic justice in the statue of 
Nemesis which the Athenians set up near the tumulus at Mara- 
thon. It was a statue cut by Phidias from a block of marble 
brought thither by the overconfident Datis, to commemorate 
the victory which he felt sure of winning when he received the 



294 OLD GREEK 

command of Darius that he must bring home Greek prisoners if 
he would keep good the union between his head and shoulders. 

The poet soldier returns to Athens. He is saddened by the 
loss of his brother, yet finds a comfort in the glad greetings of 
his countrymen, who forget private sorrows in the overflow 
of national joy. As he passes cheerful groups at the street 
comers, he hears his own name and that of Cynsegirus coupled 
with praises that remind him of early dreams, and rekindle his 
slumbering ambition. The weird voice of his unknown pre- 
server, to whom the battle of Marathon was freedom's drama, 
unites with the vine god's behest in his boyhood's vision, and 
again tells him to "write tragedy." 

Again for poetry his pulses beat, 

As Moses's serpent the Egj'ptians swallowed, 
One passion eats the rest. 

Buried once more in that old inherited library at Eleusis, in 
the stillness of delightful studies, the soldier poet finds himself 
enriched with materials for the building of other tragedies. 
They are nobler structures on a broader basis of thought, ex- 
perience, and passion. They are rich in food for hopes of life 
higher and sweeter than selfish indulgence. They find harvests 
of deep ethical wisdom in the old classic superstitions and 
legends that amused his boyhood. 

The poet's imagination has ripened into a mellow fullness, a 
depth of warm color, and a rhythmic fervor since that first crude 
and unlaureled effort. The wings of his fancy are no longer 
limp, pinfeathered, and clumsy. 

He has found out that the larger measures of wisdom 
are dealt out to those who have suffered. His knowledge 
of real life, in moments of peril, is a generous teacher that 
lends deeper meaning to his rhythms, with naturalness to his 
narratives, pith to his maxims, and prestige to his name. 

His soul is now ripe with all the hoarded thoughtfulness of 
earnest years. Difficulties formidable before now melt in his 
pathway like snowdrifts in April. The fair fame won at Mara- 
thon proves an open sesame before which the rocky gates of 



WRITER AND LECTURER 295 

wealth, authority, and prejudice fly ajar, "on golden hinges 
turning." 

One of the new tragedies is accepted almost as soon as 
offered. Great is the pressure of candidates for a place in the 
chorus. The dramatist wonders wearily where all the singers 
and costumers and dancers come from. The woods are full 
of them. He gets a thorough drill in the hard science of say- 
ing " No." He can not say that little negative when the lame 
freedman, who had brought ashore his brother's body at Mara- 
thon, asks to be allowed to personate Vulcan in the Chained 
Prometheus. "Evidently the Fates so will it. You will be 
on hand at the first rehearsal." Nor would it have been 
any easier to say "No" to the dark-eyed, sad-voiced can- 
didate, with a beardless face, who applies for the role of lo, 
the impersonation of blighted beauty, betrayed innocence, dis- 
traction, and remorse. 

" It would be too bad," said the dramatist, with a smile of 
sympathy, " to disfigure that fine Corinthian head with heifer's 
horns. KXveis (f^Oiyixa Ta<s /3ovK€p<ji irapOivovy Do you care to 
tell me aught of your history?" 

" Please, sir," pleaded the applicant, beginning to tremble 
a little, " I will tell you my history, and tell it all truly when 
you are laureled for the first prize." There was a genuine 
touch of dramatic pathos in the naivete of her suppHcant voice 
and look and attitude. She also was told to appear at the first 
rehearsal. 

Again it is gala week at Athens. In place of the old barn- 
like structure which collapsed years ago, a new marble theater 
now offers seats to upward of twenty thousand. Day is just 
breaking over Mount Lycabettus, on the twelfth of Elaphebo- 
lion, and already the streets that lead to the temple of Diony- 
sus are crowded with eager multitudes. Theater-going is an 
all-day sacred festival. The women carry lunch baskets and 
spring flowers. The city is robed in holiday apparel, albeit 
the old disease of money-making pimples out in gay and 
staring shop fronts. 

Odd provincial idioms and half-barbarous dialects astonish 



296 OLD GREEK 

and amuse the polished, fastidious Athenians. They try to 
repeat to each other the strange, dialectic twists in their musi- 
cal mother tongue. The sailorish Syracusan asks in broad 
homespun Doric if ^schylus comes on to-day. The Hsping 
Ionian dude from Smyrna softly hopes "^schylus %vill be 
handsomely beaten by Phrynichus, who has a finer ear for 
choral rhythm, don't ye know." The curt, rough Macedonian 
from the icy heels of northern Greece does not care an obol who 
beats, if the fight be only plucky. Palmyra and Cyprus have 
representatives there looking tired and blas6. But not quite 
so rakish and blas^ as the used-up Adonises from Naucratis on 
the Nile. The mercenary islander from Crete confesses to a big 
bet on Phrynichus, and pushes for a seat near to the judges. 

It was a sight to soften the rockiest heart, to see that vast 
assemblage awed into tears of sympathy by the majestic form 
of the man befriender. In his countenance heroic love and 
bitter, supernal scorn are strangely blended, as he is dragged 
by ugly Titans to the rock of torture. Twenty thousand exe- 
crations are hurled at the despot Zeus. Twenty thousand 
benisons are rained upon the champion of the human race, and 
upon his champion poet. And when the nymphs of ocean de- 
scend, with sweet, benign countenances, their chanted words of 
pity bring grateful relief to pent-up and strugghng sympathies. 

As for the sad-voiced lo, the acting could not have been 
more lifelike, the agony could not have been more undoubted, 
had she been on her way to the bridge of suicide, where 

The bleak winds of March 
Make her tremble and shiver, 
But not the dark arch, 
Or the black flowing river ; 
Mad from life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery, 
Swift to be hurled, 
Anywhere, anywhere, 
Out of the world ! 

The last drops are falling in the water clock, and the tragedy 
draws to its close. As the martyred fore-thinker utters those 



WRITER AND LECTURER 297 

final words of agony, " O Majesty of my Mother, you see how 
wrongfully I suffer," low murmurs of sympathy tremble through 
the long aisles, and deepen into a thunder of applause loud 
enough to rival the ocean's roar. 

The curtain divides the stage from the audience. The poet 
again sits in a side saloon waiting for the verdict. His hand is 
clasped in the hand most familiar to his childhood — a hand now 
thinned and enfeebled by years. 

Before the judges come forward with their award, a shield 
drops at the feet of the poet, with a Persian arrow danghng 
from its center. There is something inscribed on the shield, and 
the writing runs thus, " lo likes the tragedy because it is best — 
is infinitely better than dancing to a tambourine for the amuse- 
ment of a coarse rabble." 

" MrJTcp i/xov,'' said the dramatist, speaking slowly, " twenty- 
five years ago I went to see a Corinthian dancing girl throw 
somersaults on a cart stage, over yonder in Eleusis. I told 
her she was capable of something better than that, not knowing 
what I said. Ten years afterwards she went to Marathon, dis- 
guised as a volunteer slave boy. In the thickest of the fight 
she stopped a Persian arrow on its way to my heart. That is 
the arrow, sticking in that shield there, the very shield I do 
believe that she carried at Marathon. To-day she has given 
glory to my tragedy by her personation of lo; and I never 
guessed till this moment who was the good genius that watched 
my downsitting and my uprising, and believed in my triumphs 
while they were yet a great way off. Do you wonder, fxrjrep i/xov, 
that I believe in that unknown God, whose image we pass on 
our way home ? Do you wonder if I put my faith, not so 
much in the Triple Fates as in a kind All- Father whose goodness 
guides us when we proudly dream that we are guiding ourselves ? 

" As for the tragedy, that is a triumph because it tells the 
truth ; because it dramatizes thoughts and hopes and passions 
that lie deep down in men's hearts, yearning to be expressed 
in heroic life. The truths Prometheus so boldly utters are 
to be watchwords of advancement and freedom throughout all 
coming time. 



298 OLD GREEK 

" The triumphs of reason and liberty over falsehood and op- 
pression, in every age and clime, are imaged and prototyped in 
the exulting martyrdom of the benignant fore-thinker. Where- 
soever great and generous souls make a stand against violence 
and fraud and brutal lust, in the interest of self-empire and 
right and open-eyed intelHgence, the Promethean spirit will be 
in their midst. It will give them courage to tell their honest 
thoughts, and to put their honest thoughts into heroism at 
whatever cost. It will make life sublime with unselfish purpose. 

"It will make death a glory when it enthrones truth and 
purity in free souls that feel their freedom doubled in the free- 
dom of their kind." 

There is no teUing how much more might have been said in 
the same vein had not the judges now come forward to an- 
nounce : 

" First prize to ^schylus, son of Euphorion, and the * Pro- 
metheus Bound.' " 

The Old Greek Lexicon 

We will suppose, to begin with, that you have two long-loved 
friends. Both are men of genius and learning, and both are 
kept indoors by protracted illness. Something moves you to 
carry to each of them a basket of flowers. The flowers are in 
fragrant disorder, and damp with the dews of a sunrise in 
June. The tired eyelids of your two friends run over with 
thankfulness. Now watch them in silent curiosity. You notice 
that one of your friends deals with his flowers tenderly, as if 
they had conscious sympathy and feeling ; or as if they were 
tiny chariots bringing fairy visitants from a brighter world. 
How careful he is not to disturb a single dewdrop ! With the 
skill and taste of an artist in colors, he deftly builds them into 
a graceful design. Then he inhales their sweetness with sobs 
of delight. He gazes at them in fond and speechless reverie ; 
while his thoughts, forgetful of pain and physic and prisonment, 
go scampering off" over the long track of years gone by, scam- 
pering through the woods, with schoolmates, when school is 
out, in search of sweet flag and wintergreen. 



WRITER AND LECTURER 299 

The other friend makes a different deal with the flowers you 
carry him. He carefully spreads them out on the table, as if 
it were a dissecting table. Then he classifies the flowers, ac- 
cording to certain outside resemblances and affinities. He 
proceeds to inspect them, as a provost marshal might inspect 
a squad of raw recruits. He calmly pulls them to pieces, 
counting stamens and pistils and petals. He pulls out a micro- 
scope, and scrutinizes more closely and minutely. He looks 
sharply after seed vessels and sexual differences. He bites 
the stalks, testing the flavor of their juices. All this time he is 
telHng over, on a sort of vegetable rosary, some formula of 
heathenish worship, in which you can detect such broken 
phrases as "perianth whorled," "stamens hypogynous," 
" aments racemed," " anthers extrorse," k. t. a. Evidently your 
first friend was born with the poet's vision and faculty divine. 
Evidently your second friend has the gifts and qualities that 
would magnify the office of a lexicographer. Both are passion- 
ately fond of flowers. Both are heartily grateful for the kind- 
ness that brings them. Yet they are decidedly unHke each 
other — almost as unlike as a blackbird and a blackboard, or a 
bobolink and a bobsled. 

They are equally earnest and useful as organizers of knowl- 
edge, loving it as much for its own sake as for its manifold uses. 
They represent the opposite forces of synthesis and analysis. 
The one organizes by putting together, the other by putting 
asunder. The poet creates, combines, embodies, narrates, and 
marries to immortal music. The lexicographer analyzes, ar- 
ranges, tabulates, classifies, interprets, and illustrates. The poet 
invents words, phrases, and rhythms. He gives shape and 
color and voice to the airy nothings of a prolific fancy. He 
weaves thoughts and feelings into song. 

And the song from beginning to end, 
Is found at last in the heart of a friend. 

The lexicographer, like a remorseless, hungry jackal, takes the 
song and pulls it to pieces, foot from foot, and rhyme from 
rhyme. It has no value in his critical eyes, until he knows 



300 OLD GREEK 

whereof it is made, and where the material was found. Each 
syllable is twisted from its fellow-syllable, like the limbs of 
Pentheus, when the Bacchantes wreaked their saintly wrath 
upon him. Then the separate words are put into the crucible 
of etymology, and plied with the acid and blowpipe of analysis. 
They are forced to surrender the secrets of their origin and 
history. They are made to tell all about their travels, their 
coquetries, their intermarriages and experiences with foreign 
literatures. Then they are carefully adjusted, pressed, accented, 
measured, labeled, classified, interpreted, and put away for 
future use, in some narrow stall of that Alphabetical Hortus 
Siccus, called the lexicon. 

The poet and the lexicographer are antipodal to each 
other. They represent different eras and forces in literature 
and learning. Between the birth of Homer and the birth of 
the first Greek lexicon there is a distance of at least ten cen- 
turies, covering almost the entire history of Greek civilization. 
In the slow growth of a nation's Hterature, poetry comes first, 
lexicography comes last. As children learn their mother 
tongue by lisping nursery rhymes, so language in its cradle- 
hood is full of poetry. Then syllables are seeds quick with 
thought. Then words are images; paradigms are sculptured 
monuments ; poems are panoramas. In Homer's time, Greek 
words were clay in the hands of the potter, singing at his wheel. 
Words were soft, plastic caoutchouc, waiting to be molded into 
shape. Homer could cHp his unresisting words at either end, 
could draw his elastic Ionic vowels in or out, and no one 
found fault. Homer could coin as many new words as he 
pleased, and no envious, carping critic disputed their right to 
pass current. King Usus had not yet usurped the throne of 
Rhetoric, and set up his iron despotism. Five or six centuries 
slip away, and the language has grown fixed and rigid. Words 
are now crystallized into definite forms, stamped with the 
symbols of authority, hampered with conventional shackles, 
collected into dictionaries, and organized into literature. 
Critics are numerous, wide-awake, erudite, sharp-set, and 
jealous. Let a new word make its appearance, and straight- 



^f> ■ 



WRITER AND LECTURER 30 1 

way all the old words make war upon it. " This fellow," they 
all say, "is an interloper, a carpetbagger, a slangy parvenue. 
He is a shoddy upstart, with no business to be here. He is 
not to be found in the lexicon." So he is twitted, and smoked 
out, and ducked, and driven to the wall, until nothing but good 
pluck and persistent fighting save him from premature death. 

And what shall be the fate of this familiar Greek lexicon 
when its undergraduate uses are ended? You can see it as it 
lies there on the table, like a piece of battered armor when the 
battle is over, discolored by age, ragged at the corners, reduced 
to a Bohny skeleton, shattered at the spinal column, grimed with 
study's effacing finger, yet so supinely plethoric in its com- 
municative habit; so resolutely cheerable in its bulky open- 
heartedness it could not stay shut if it would, it would not stay 
shut if it could. 

It remains at its post of duty, faithful among the faltering ; 
merely waiting to answer a few more hurried questions ; willing 
to reveal the ancestry of a few more adverbs, the quantity of a 
few more syllables, the force of a few more of those slippery 
particles. It has still an ample stock of what the Scotch 
teacher called " very canny yarns, though unco short." It is 
still ready to make good the African preacher's consoling 
remark to his audience of fellow- Africans, that "there is one 
place where they could always be sure of finding sympathy — 
in the lexicon." 

It is as ready as ever to communicate curious knowledge, to 
rectify Bohny absurdities, and unriddle desperate difficulties. 
It has no end of patience to be thumb-screwed, cudgeled, and 
cross-questioned; all unconscious that its owner is ungrate- 
fully, treacherously rejoicing that his day of deliverance is at 
last in sight ; that his intellect is now to be emancipated from 
the apron strings of a dry-nursing lexicon ; that he is henceforth 
to be at liberty to enjoy the amaranths of Attic poetry, without 
stooping, under the spur of authority, to botanize, "with 
sharpened inspection," over the elements of their brilliant and 
delicate organism. 

Shall not some pledge of permanent friendship be given, 



302 OLD GREEK 

here and now and loyally ? Shall not some few words of kindly 
parting be spoken ^for this venerable volume, as it " lags super- 
fluous on the stage," with a gentlest reproach on its wasted 
features, now that the tragedy is acted out, the curtain ready 
to fall, and the manager impatient to shut ofl" the electric 
lights ? 

When the feast of poets is breaking up, and hearts are mel- 
low with sympathy, shall not a few words of innocent gallantry 
be spoken to the modest Ganymede who has filled the cups, 
like those spoken to the daughter of King Alcinous, as she 
lingered by a tall pillar in her father's mansion? 

As a stupendous mausoleum of learned industry, a mauso- 
leum that cost thousands of precious, consecrated, toilsome 
lives, that perpetuates the power, while it epitaphs the grave of 
a mighty nation, the old Greek lexicon is well worth a place 
of honor in the scholar's library. 

Before it could come into existence, the wonderful language, 
whose elements it holds in solution, must have grown up from 
chaos to cosmos, by the slow accretions and coral-like masonry 
of centuries. 

The winged symbols of thought, at first unorganized, guer- 
rilla vocahties, rude onomatopes, echoing natural sounds — 
voces, et prceterea nihil — these lawless ejaculations must have 
found permanent shape and lodgment in written words. His- 
torians must be trained and inspired to investigate and record 
after sifting the wheat from the chaff. Poets must be schooled 
to sing and dramatize. Orators and philosophers must be 
trained to magnetize and control the masses. 

The nation they represent must build itself up in wealth and 
power, and must spread itself over large territory with the 
vital patience and rooted tenacity of a climbing oak. It must 
run its career of conquest on land and sea; it must make 
splendid achievements in architecture and art, in music and the 
drama; it must be lapped in luxuries won by commerce, by 
traffic, by industry, by servile toil ; it must then rust to decay 
in some whirlwind of war and internal strife. The nation must 
give up its independence to invading powers and lose its cher- 



WRITER AND LECTURER 303 

ished glory, save so much as is presented to the world in its 
temples, its tombs, its papyri, its historic coins, and its books. 

Among these books will be such keys to the language and its 
literature as the " Onomasticon " of Julius Pollux, the "Glossa- 
rium " of Hesychius, and the '* Lexicon " of Photius. These 
and similar works must be transported to other cHmes ; must 
become the study, the stimulus, the nurture, and the dehght of 
devoted scholars in later centuries. Their utter destruction 
must be threatened by fire and flood, by tempest and volcano, 
by war and pillage, by moth and mildew, by ignorance and 
brutal spite, by avarice and fanatic malice. These priceless 
records of genius must be hoarded with pious care by cowled 
CarmeHte and withered antiquary in the stillness of religious 
solitude, where they are painfully copied over and over, with 
marginal emendations and footnotes of commentary. 

This precious deposit of a nation's intellectual wealth and 
bequest must sleep on, safely forgotten, through long ages of 
mediaeval darkness, unharmed by the southward tramp of 
Scandinavian hordes, undisturbed by the eastward rush and 
roar of crusading torrents, until at last it comes forth from 
convent crypts, from imperial hiding places, from disentombed 
cities, moth-eaten, dust-laden, fire-blackened, to be infinitely 
multipHed, and made sure of immortality by the newly 
invented printing press, to be used in helping forward the 
renaissance of learning and art, and in guiding the progress of 
a higher Christian civilization. 

A new race of grammarians, scholiasts, etymologists, metri- 
cists, annotators, philologists, archeologists, a noble brother- 
hood of Champollions, Layards, Neanders, Tischendorfs, 
Schliemanns, Cesnolas, must be reared up and schooled for 
the work of deciphering unaccented uncials in mutilated and 
corrupt papyri, uncovering twice-used palimpsests, filling up de- 
plorable gaps — hiatus valde deflendus — restoring lost phrases, 
turning the light of history upon obscure readings and defaced 
inscriptions, baflling the sphynxes of rhythm, Ithurielizing dis- 
guised errors, and finally disintegrating these master works of 
genius, that out of the piecemealed rubbish might be con- 



304 OLD GREEK 

structed the all-embracing, thoroughly digested, oracular lexi- 
con, that shall say to all thirsters after Greek knowledge, " Ask, 
and ye shall be answered ; seek, and ye shall surely find." 

Think for a moment what it cost to produce these thesauri 
of unorganized words, these magazines of unsandaled thought, 
so conveniently tabulated, so promptly responsive to every 
hurried call. Think of the long journeys it cost through 
Saharas of arid lore, with the racking wear and tear of busy, 
puzzled brain, cheated often by the mirage of false reading ; 
think of the desperate endeavors to classify chaos ; to organize 
Babel, and bring method out of endless confusion ; think of 
searching for enclitic needles in logacedic haymows ; think of 
the iron energy and patience slowly exhausted, as granite is 
worn away by continual dropping, with the stinted measures 
of long-deferred reward, and say if the Greek lexicon deserves 
to be neglected the moment it becomes more an ornament 
than a necessity. Tell me if it should be thrown aside at the 
close of a classical curriculum, like a used-up cigar, or a last 
week's newspaper. 

Something of gratitude surely is due to the self-denying 
enthusiasm of those early martyrs to classical knowledge and 
linguistic exploration who were content to serve " not as pupils, 
but as the slaves of science, the pioneers of literature, doomed 
only to remove rubbish, and clear obstructions from the path 
through which learning and genius press forward to conquest 
and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge 
who facilitates their progress." 

Recall the exemplary and wondering appreciation of Scaliger 
who on his reverent knees rendered thanks to Heaven for being 
" so good as to inspire some few men with a genius for making 
dictionaries." 

Realize, if you can, what an agony of despair was mother to 
the grim conceit that hell is paved not so much with good 
intentions as with good lexicons. Think no longer of the 
undying worm and the quenchless fire, of Homer's Sisyphus 
sweating under his huge slippery bowlder, of Tantalus famished 
in the midst of mocking plenty, of the Danaides draining a 



WRITER AND LECTURER 305 

river with perforated dippers, of Prometheus with a daily vul- 
ture tugging at his vitals ; of Beckford's Vathek in the dismal 
hall of Eblis, with his hand on his wasting heart, of the gnash- 
ing teeth, 

The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel, 

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel. 

Substitute for all these used-up symbols, the making of dic- 
tionaries as the truest emblem of hell's extreme torture, the 
only punishment that includes and epitomizes all other punish- 
ments : 

Scribendaque lexica mandat 

Damnatzs, pcenam pro poenis omnibus unam. 

So much for lexicography in the past. And the work is still 
going on with amazing enterprise, enthusiasm, and vast wealth 
of agencies in the building of new and more complete lexicons 
for modern languages. The scholars of Germany, France, and 
England are struggling with unflagging energy to outstrip all 
precedents and all competition in perfecting the census of 
words in their several languages. German Hnguists are such 
restless, endless workers that if thoroughly beaten they would 
never find it out. France, with its intense egotism, is bound 
to have all other languages revolve about its Dictionnaire 
Frangais, if it costs another Tower of Babel. England has 
gained an immense advantage at the outset by organizing an 
international system, under the lead of Doctor James A. H. 
Murray, in a heroic struggle for the supreme laurel, with its 
new English dictionary, in six quarto volumes, each larger 
than Webster's International. 

The brazen shield in which Hercules and Iphicles were 
rocked, when their mother, Alcmene, crooned her immortal 
lullaby, was equally useful in the nursery and on the battlefield. 
So the Greek lexicon is capable of a kindly service, after " the 
drilled dull lessons " of the classroom are ended. Its resources 
for culture, for entertainment, for inspiration, are not then ex- 
hausted. There is still cream on its surface and gold in its 
veins. Wit, wisdom, eloquence, and song still live in its afflu- 



306 OLD GREEK 

ent suggestiveness. " Age can not wither, nor custom stale its 
infinite variety." 

Whoso reads right will rarely look upon 
A better poet than his lexicon. 

It can keep down the narrow drawbridge that connects the 
loud stirring outer world with " the still air of delightful 
studies." It carries on each page a magic mirror that will bring 
before fancy's vision the calm, benignant features of those 
mighty word masters, whom the fond attachment of scholars 
would not suffer to die, even if their death were a possible 
doom. 

So long as life's lamp holds out to burn, the lexicon should 
be a welcome daily aid for the study of inspired truth, of 
truth as lodged in the gracious Greek words of the New Testa- 
ment. 

Some years ago, two graduates of this college met at a 
General Assembly. One said to the other, " I read a chapter 
in the Greek Testament every morning." " Very good," repHed 
the fellow-graduate, " I not only read a chapter in the Greek 
Testament every morning, but I commit a portion of it to 
memory, and I find I can now memorize it as easily as I can 
the English translation." 

When the sacred history of our Saviour, with its vital relations 
to the upward progress of our race, with its rich freightage of 
subjects and suggestions for painters and sculptors, poets and 
orators, has wrested from sneering unbeHevers the confession 
that they "find in it the grandest things ever written," when 
Byron and Shelley filch from it their sweetest honey, how over- 
whelming its claims on the Christian scholar ! What book in 
the wide range of history, science, biography, and literature is 
half so worthy of intimate, hearty, accepted knowledge as the 
volume that came from divine inspiration, and in the self-same 
words of its first coming ! What a priceless boon is his who 
owns a key to its treasures in the Greek lexicon ! 

Is it too much to say in this presence, that the lexicon will 
perpetuate not ungrateful memories of a period of study now 



WRITER AND LECTURER 307 

closing, in which the relation of student and teacher has not 
been one of antagonism, ahenation, and distance, but of mutual 
sympathy and trust and good feeling ? In coming years, when 
sorrow and disappointment and toil have furrowed the brow, 
and pushed the golden bowl to the edge Of its breaking, the 
unchanged lexicon will have its story to tell, when there is 
comfort in the telling, of youth's eager aspirations, sobered now 
by rough reality, of study's genial nurture and discipline, still 
adding something of sweetness and something of beauty to the 
surroundings of Ufe's monotonous drudgery. It will tell of 
castles in the Spain of a college daydream, whose brilliant 
ruins have been formed into the solid structures of a workful, 
useful life. 

It will help to keep green the memory of unenvious rivalries, 
that brought the rewards of finish and enterprise to scholarship, 
of grace and nutriment to thinking, of strength and ripeness, 
depth and breadth to character. It will help to perpetuate the 
rare blessing that lives in those hearty, breezy, unmercenary 
companionships of student days, with their tender backward 
glances, and their eager onward reachings that search the soul, 
as with June's quickening sunshine, for its hidden seeds of 
heroism, and bid them blossom into generous deeds. 

As thrills a long-hushed tone 
Live in the viol, so will souls grow fine 
With deep vibrations from the touch divine 
Of noble natures gone. 



CHAPTER X 

LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 

Philologist — The Study of Words — Puns and Punsters 
— The Spelling Reform Movement — The Language of 
the Future — Indebtedness of English to the Greek 
Language — Silent and Superfluous Letters — The 
Argument for Phonetic Spelling — Josh Billings, 

To some persons, words are things concrete, prosaic, 
simply tools of intercommunication, unsuggestive as the 
clothes they wear ; to Doctor North, each word in itself 
was a parable, a saga, a history informed with life and 
poetry, an integral part of the immense epic of humanity. 
The mystery and the wonder of words, of their origin, 
evolution, and significance, appealed to him. His own 
training had been received before the era of the special- 
ist, and the study of language by the methods of modem 
philology. He never cared to write a Greek grammar, 
or to indulge in dry and dusty disquisitions on the intri- 
cacies of the Greek particles. Thus his mind was left 
unwarped to imbibe the Greek love of life and beauty, 
to live in the Greek thought, and to sensitize the Greek 
poetry. In his study of words, he was poet and philolo- 
gist combined. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was 
an open sesame to the beauties, the intricacies, and the 
significances of the modern languages with which he 
was familiar — the English, the French, and the German. 
He loved to wander among etymologies, as he loved to 
wander amid forests and fields. Several of the most 
delightful of his lectures dealt with words. The philolo- 

308 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 309 

gist's power of observation and the literary artist's taste 
and feeling find expression in his lecture on " The Worth 
of Words," from which these extracts are taken : 

The Worth of Words 

Homer is the poet of an exact physiology when he charac- 
terizes men as " voice dividers," /xepoTres av9p(07roL, so true it 
is that the words we articulate in our daily voice-dividing 
intercourse with one another are the proof of our creation in 
God's likeness. They are the proof of our supreme spiritual 
dignity. They are the proof and support of our elevation 
above the prone, dumb brute that lives without articulate, 
thoughtful, voice-dividing speech ; that dies with no hope of a 
future life, making no sign, and asking for no epitaph. No 
fact in all life's wonders is more wonderful than this, that by 
sending our words to the printer we may talk to live thinkers 
in the twenty-first century, just as Theocritus talks to us to- 
day with words written twenty-one centuries ago. 

What, then, is there in all nature more marvelous than 
speech, unless it be thought, and it may be claimed that 
speech is the more wonderful of the two. Shelley makes such 
a claim in his " Prometheus Unbound " : 

He gave man speech and speech created thought, 
Which is the measure of the universe. 

It is claimed by some philologists that we can think of single 
objects without giving them names. Yet all allow that con- 
tinuous, logical thinking compels the use of language. 

It is not alone in our outward life, not alone in our deal- 
ings with one another, that we feel the need and confess the 
worth of words. We use them as instruments of thought. 
Purely abstract, unworded thinking is almost impossible. 
We can no more think without words, than we can compute 
without the nine digits. Imagination glories in its freedom, 
yet this freedom is as much in bondage to words as the bird's 
freedom is a debt to its wings. So rooted is our habit of 
identifying ideas with words, that if we undertake to carry 



310 OLD GREEK 

forward a train of unexpressed thinking, without the aid of 
words, we shall soon discover that we have undertaken a task 
not simply difficult, but beyond human ability. We shall soon 
find ourselves as much bewildered as a mariner at sea in a 
midnight tempest, without chart, compass, or rudder. So 
true it is that words are the keys which unlock all the cham- 
bers of thought and fancy, and give us free access to all the 
vast treasures hoarded in our spiritual nature. They are the 
power that helps us to mate and commune with all the mighty 
intellects of the past. 

Whether found in ancient or modern literature, words will 
repay all the time and thought we may give to them. They 
will make rich returns for the toil of manipulating dry gram- 
mars, corpulent lexicons, and fossil text-books. 

If one would investigate the science of words, it will be 
pertinent to ask, By what authority do they accomplish their 
ends ? Whence do they draw this authority ? What is there in 
their nature to give them so much of might and dominion ? 

It will not satisfy such questions to say that words are 
indebted for all of their authority and influence to the thoughts 
they enunciate. The thought is something — a something 
that is vital and not to be dispensed with. Yet the bare 
thought is not ever)rthing. We all know that the same 
thought may be put forth in a great variety of ways ; that one 
expression is chilling and disagreeable ; another is warm and 
welcome. We well know that of text-books in which the 
same subject is handled, the same facts presented, and the 
same conclusions arrived at, one will be read with eager 
delight ; the other will not be read at all. We know, too, that 
the truths of the gospel — truths vital to the soul's eternal 
welfare — will fall from one pulpit like the voice of a trumpet, 
rousing listeners to think and feel and act. From another 
pulpit the same confessedly vital and everlasting truths will 
drop, like soothing poppy juices, lulling men, women, and 
children to nod and dream. 

Whence this wide difference, if it is not to be found, partly 
at least, in the French maxim, ** Le style c'est Vhomnie " (The 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 311 

style is the man)? The power of one's thought depends not 
more upon its quality and truthfulness than upon the way the 
thought is put into syllables. 

It must be right to say that words derive something of 
authority and power to impress from sources that are collat- 
eral to the truths expressed. 

One of these collateral sources, often overlooked, is that 
of innate significance. Words are signs of ideas. These 
signs are either natural or arbitrary. They are natural when 
we discover a correspondence between sound and sense : a 
sympathy between the thought and its symbol. When the 
sound of a word itself suggests a fact, or an idea, or a feeling, 
and this when it appears in different languages may be said 
to have a natural, inborn expressiveness. Such words were 
at first the invention of rude men, or men of different ver- 
naculars, in their efforts to reciprocate ideas. 

The Greek language was wonderfully hospitable to the in- 
nate significance of imitative words. In calling the donkey 
a 6yKr]Tt]<5, or brayer, the bird of Juno a kokkv^, or cuckoo, the 
bumblebee a /Sofif^vXto^, or buzzer, the pig a ypvXXos, or 
grunter, the katydid a riTTii, or tickster, the piper a a-vpLo-T-^?, 
or whistler, the cymbal player a TVfjLTravLo-Trjs, or drummer, the 
faultfinder, yoyyvart]?, or mutterer, the Greeks named these 
creatures after their familiar noises. Thus they revealed 
the wonderful sympathy of the Greek language with the 
messages it was commissioned to carry. 

The words echo, thwack^ crash, roar, shiver, hiss, in our 
own language, belong to this imitative class. Who that has 
ever had his own shout tossed back into his ears by a smooth, 
high wall can fail to see the native authority for such a word 
as echo? Nor will one marvel to find that a word, whose 
sound so fitly vocalizes the idea it conveys, is a home-bred 
indigenous word, as well in the ancient as the modern 
tongues. 

As for thwack, crash, roar, and shiver, 3. wood chopper in 
the ice-bound forests of Russia would make a good guess at 
their meaning, without the help of Webster or Worcester. 



312 OLD GREEK 

The Saxon hiss is noticeable for its innate significance. 
Its natural descriptiveness, however, is somewhat weakened 
by the fact that sibilants abound in our vernacular — so 
exceedingly abound that Southey once declared the old 
serpent must have borrowed an Englishman's tongue for the 
tempting of Eve. Byron, you know, calls it 

Our harsh, northern, whistling, grunting guttural 
Which we're obliged to hiss and spit and sputter all. 

If a child, with a child's slender stock of words, were 
required, as Adam was, to give names to the beasts of the 
field and the fowls of the air, there is a strong likelihood that 
the hen would be christened a " kut-kut-ker-dar-kut," and 
the horse a " kanter-ti-banter." That we never wholly 
outgrow this preference for words that are onomatopoetic, 
or reproductive of natural sounds, is proved by the warm 
favor we extend to such musical names as '^bobolink," " katy- 
did," "bul-bul," and " whippoorwill." These names are 
dear to all natural poets. They are liked because of a close 
and pleasant association between them and the objects they 
stand for. Their meaning is not arbitrary and conventional, 
but natural and self-suggested. 

Words can also be combined by ingenious poets so skill- 
fully that their undulations of rhythmical sound shall repeat 
to the ear just what they picture to the mind. When Virgil 
describes the rapid motion of a body of cavalry, the cantering 
of horses is distinctly audible in the dactylic cadence of the 
verse. Hear it: 

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum. 

Virgil's onomatope is only a close imitation of Homer's 

TToXXa 5' avavra, Karavra, irdpavrd re, 56x/itd r' 'fjXdov. 

Alexander Pope tried hard to reproduce this inimitable 
line. But Pope's animals go with a limp : 

O'er hills, o'er dales, o'er rocks, o'er crags they go. 

Homer celebrates the fatal archery of angry Apollo with an 
imitative hexameter, in which one can hear the sharp twang 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 313 

of the bow, the whiz of the arrow, and the hum of the vibrat- 
ing string : 

AeivTj 8^ KXayyrj yiver dpyvpioLo ^loto. 

In Tennyson's famous ''Owl Song," which critics have 
sharply condemned as poor nursery jingle, because not under- 
standing the author's purpose, the rhythm echoes most 
musically the melancholy voice of Minerva's night bird : 

I would mock thy chaunt anew, 

But I can not mimic it ; 
Not a whit of thy tu-whoo, 
Thee to woo to thy to-whit, 
Thee to woo to thy to-whit, 
With a lengthened, loud halloo, 
Tu-whoo, tu-whit, tu-whit, tu-whoo. 

Sometimes words derive power to captivate and impress 
from their novelty and unexpectedness. Odd as it may 
seem, it is none the less true, that certain words make an 
impression upon us because they are old ; because they are 
descended, like Maecenas, from a long line of honored an- 
cestors. Other words make an impression upon us because 
they are new ; because, like the first Napoleon, they stand at 
the head of what promises to be an important dynasty. We 
like an old friend who links our thoughts to sweeter days, 
who goes down with us in memory's diving bell, to search for 
the lost pearls of the past. We will never desert that old 
friend, yet this need not prevent our giving hearty greeting to 
a new acquaintance. We love the old classical words that 
have waited so loyally like nimble Ariels on the lips of Cicero, 
Demosthenes, and Homer ; yet this is no reason for giving the 
cold shoulder to the new words, just beginning their career 
of influence. 

To say, as some purists persist in saying, an author or 
speaker shall never invent a new term or a new combination 
of verbal elements, when words are the instruments he uses 
for giving outward body to his thoughts, is as hard as it 
would be to say the mechanic shall never invent a new piece 
of machinery. As the mechanic constructs labor-saving 



314 OLD GREEK 

machinery, so the thinker finds out speech-saving words. 
New inventions in science and art necessitate the inaugura- 
tion of new forms of speech for describing them. When 
Daguerre invented his method of persuading the sun to turn 
portrait painter, it created a peremptory demand for the 
words " daguerreotype " and " photograph." The submarine 
telegraph suggested and justified the use of cablegram. In 
the domain of literature and pure science, the call for novel- 
ties of expression may be less apparent, but it is not less real 
and pressing. 

A writer of original force and fertility finds himself pos- 
sessed of and possessed by some striking thought which no 
existing phrase is competent to embody and fully set forth. 
He is driven to the alternative of either crippling this new-born 
thought to which he is father and natural guardian, or of con- 
triving an appropriate costume for it. The latter course he 
is not slow to choose, and his readers, should his contrivance 
be felicitous, are not slow to thank him for his bold ingenuity. 

There is room and call for progress in the art of utterance, 
as well as in those other arts of which it is preservative. 
Moreover, there is a charm and a luster about words newly 
minted that would secure their popular acceptance, even were 
they not sometimes essential to an author's full, sincere, and 
earnest expression of himself. 

The conversion of notorious names into pro tempore verbs, 
like /xi^St^o) from /xT^StKos, is an easy expedient often resorted 
to by the Greeks for giving concreteness and crystalhzation 
to ideas which elsewise would have to be jerved up in diluted 
form. This trick of word coining is not a modern discovery. 
The word " Philippize " was first used by Demosthenes just 
before the battle of Chaeronea. Some of his friends wished 
to consult the oracle of Delphi. Demosthenes shook his 
head : " The oracle Philippizes." This was the orator's way 
of hinting that the priestess had taken a bribe from PhiHp, 
and that her responses would be in his interest. If an Athe- 
nian aped the quaint, slovenly habits of Xanthippe's husband, 
he was said to Socratize. It is related of Desiderius Eras- 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 315 

mus, the leading Hellenist of the sixteenth century, founder 
of the continental system of Greek pronunciation, that when 
he tried to advocate reforms in the Roman church, without 
indorsing the secession of Martin Luther, another famous 
Hellenist, Alexander of Venice, coined his condemnation in 
a Greek epigram that must have been suggested by the exam- 
ple of Demosthenes : 

6 Aovdrjpbs epacTfii^ei, 6 ''Epacrfibs XovdrjpL^ei. 
Luther Erasmusizes, Erasmus Lutherizes. 

Is there no danger that our language will in the end be- 
come overloaded and enfeebled by this unending accession 
of new words ? Not the slightest. Wherever there is life, 
there must also be growth. A tree can not live without its 
annual renewal of leaves and shoots. If a language is to 
live, it must live by growing. No American or Englishman 
ever has occasion to use half the words in his unabridged 
dictionary. Probably Shakespeare used more words than 
any other English author. Yet his plays contain not more 
than 15,000 out of 120,000. Milton needed only 8,000 words 
for the pyramid of his immortal fame, and the Old Testament 
says all it has to say with 5,642 words. With Homer the mak- 
ing of new words was as easy as lying, yet he used only 
9,000. A well-educated person will be contented with the 
service of about 4,000 words for social purposes. A washer- 
woman contrives to worry through the world and do a large 

stroke of gossiping on a capital of about 300 words. 

******* 

Using words in a double sense is another way of clothing 
them with an increase of executive power. To say this is 
a step taken on debatable ground. Puns are Ishmaelites in 
literature. Everybody has a sneer to fling at them. Cer- 
tainly the professional punster, who dedicates his whole soul 
to the business of catching and torturing unoffending words 
and phrases, is one of the meanest of all who sport the un- 
ruly member. Yet puns are not to be altogether despised, 
when they come unsought. They are as old as Homer, 
and indigenous to every language. Milton introduces an 



3l6 OLD GREEK 

assortment of them into the " Paradise Lost." Queerly 
enough, they are all uttered by fallen angels. This may have 
been Milton's way of expressing contempt for this species of 
wit. He made a proper disposition of them, at all events. 
For they are lame attempts at humor. 

As a class, punsters are cold-blooded, irreverent, and re- 
morseless. Nothing is too pure or sacred or high to be 
assailed by them, or to be used as a means of assault. They 
will even wrest the language of Scripture, and with an effect 
all the broader from the hallowed memories that linger about 
the sentences, which by a little sleight of tongue are made 
to convey the most ludicrous impressions. 

It may also be said that words derive authority from 
being used with economy. One who should follow the prac- 
tice of throwing gold coin to each wayside beggar would 
both impoverish himself and spoil the beggar's relish for 
fivepenny charities. So the writer who wastes the choicest 
wealth of his vernacular on beggarly commonplaces will find 
his tongue poor and bankrupt when great good thoughts are 
struggling to be uttered. As for the commonplaces, they 
will only be made ridiculous by being arrayed in garments 
too wide for their shrunk proportions. 

This leads me to say once more, that words derive a large 
share of authority and effectiveness from the character and posi- 
tion of those who use them. A government bond has no value 
in the market, unless there is good faith behind it. Words have 
more strength when uttered by strong men. It is a common 
remark that in preaching the thing of least consequence is the 
sermon. The most effective of all sermons, and that which 
gives the greatest efficacy to every other, is the sermon of a 
blameless Christian life. 

When a blustering poltroon, like Thersites or Falstaff, deals 
out valiant words, we laugh at the speech and waste no amens 
on the speaker. Let the same syllables come from one of tried 
heroism, and we listen as to an oracle. Washington was a man 
of few sentences, and these were not always trimmed and 
toileted after the latest rhetorical pattern. Yet each public 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 317 

utterance from his great heart went to milKons of hearts Hke an 
inspired gospel. The first Napoleon was a dealer in short, 
rough sentences. Yet his countrymen knew that he meant 
what he said. They knew that his words would not come back 
to him void. The majesty of his whole character and career 
gave weight and inspiration to his most casual remarks. His 
language gave expression to his life as appropriately as thunder 
gives voice to the hghtning : 

Cujus vita fulgor^ ejus verba tonitrua. 

When he said to his soldiers just before the battle of Borodino, 
" Behold the sun of Austerlitz ! " there was that in his voice 
which took from death its sting and made fighting a fierce joy. 

Andrew Jackson was not a finished rhetorician, but when 
South Carolina threatened to secede, his declaration, *^ By the 
eternal, this Union shall be preserved," killed secession for 
half a century, and helped the heroes of the war for the Union 
to kill it forever. 

It is written of our Blessed Saviour that *' he spake as never 
man spake; as one having authority and not as the scribes." 
This authority was based on his purity of life, his benevolence 
of heart, his intrepid truthfulness, his believed divinity. In its 
grammatical elements Christ's language was precisely like that 
of the Pharisees. He used the same vowels and consonants ; 
the same parts of speech ; yet no taint of hypocrisy destroyed 
their lustrous edge and vital force. So great was the authority 
of his language, it gave him a distinctive title. He was lan- 
guage deified, 6 Aoyo?. " In the beginning was the Word, 6 Aoyo?, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Being 
made flesh, and speaking among us out of the fullness of his 
grace and truth, he affords an adorable example of the benefi- 
cent and transcendent power that will ever shrine itself in 
words fitly and righteously and earnestly spoken. 

Doctor North was not only philologist and poet ; he 
was also a utilitarian, in his language study ; and so it 
happened that in later years he became earnestly inter- 



3l8 OLD GREEK 

ested in the cause of spelling reform, and prepared sev- 
eral public addresses on the subject which attracted 
wide attention, and were helpful to the cause. Doctor 
North's case was one among the many which prove that 
the movement for the simplification and unification of 
Enghsh orthography, instead of being a movement hos- 
tile to the preservation of Hnguistic purity and tradition, 
appeals to the best instincts of the scholar and the lan- 
guage lover. He says in one of his lectures that when 
he first began to seriously study the subject, he was 
ready to join with other conservatives in a skeptical 
laugh at the spelling reform ; but that he had found the 
facts, when fairly considered, fatal to indifference. 
"As men have been converted by an effort to prove 
Christianity a failure, I frankly confess I have been 
made a moderate spelling reformer by trying to satisfy 
myself that the spelling reform is uncalled for, Quixotic 
and impossible ; " and he continues, "has not the time 
gone by when we are required to think of our mother 
tongue as a mysterious household divinity, hedged about 
with an authority that must never be questioned, per- 
plexing us with decisions that must be accepted, right 
or wrong, clothed with innumerable attributes that must 
be treated with all the greater tenderness if they are 
whimsical, unhistorical, oppressive, and exasperating ? " 
He rejoiced to find himself in the best of company, 
after he had enrolled himself in the ranks of the spelling 
reformers, and burned his bridges behind him. He 
attended a meeting of the American Philological Asso- 
ciation at Saratoga, in 1878, and joined its members 
in a resolution indorsing the movement. When he got 
home, he was moved to write down some of his impres- 
sions of that meeting : 

When we think of the eighty millions or more of men, 
women, and children, who, in each quarter of the globe, in 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 319 

schoolrooms and countingrooms, in Grub-street garrets and 
log cabins, in college halls, and perfumed parlors, are painfully, 
piously, perseveringly struggling with the absurdities of our 
written vernacular, the action of those philologists at Saratoga 
has in it elements of faith, hope, and courage that are well-nigh 
sublime. A scoffing unbeHever might say that it recalled the 
sturdy illogical energy of Dame Partington, mopping back the 
Atlantic ocean from her kitchen at Sidmouth. Yet it is not 
quite impossible that this spelling reform, now despised and 
neglected, may one day become itself the rising tide that shall 
laugh to scorn the mopping Partingtons of the current unor- 
thography. 

Such ripe and honorable scholars as Professor Francis A.March 
of Lafayette College ; Professor W. D. Whitney of Yale College ; 
Professor S. S. Haldeman of the University of Pennsylvania; 
Hon. W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Education ; Professor I. 
Hammond Trumbull, Professor Max Mtiller, and others who give 
their support to the spelling reform, are not bookworms, with 
their intellectual eyes put behind. They are wide-minded phi- 
lanthropists, as well as gifted and erudite scholars. They are men 
of practical good sense and sagacity, who look upon written 
language not as a fetish, to be blindly worshiped, but as an instru- 
ment worthy to be studied in all its wonderful history, and most 
worthy to be improved and perfected, like any other human 
contrivance for satisfying human wants. 

They believe that in all works of science and all text-books 
for study the supreme excellence is the telling of the truth with 
clearness, exactness, and simplicity of statement. They look 
forward to the time when written and oral language shall be so 
improved, that the young in years may become veterans in 
knowledge and wisdom; when opening and eager intellects 
shall be enriched with the wealth of centuries devoted to toil- 
some study; when beginners in learning may appropriate in 
half a day principles which the most gifted scholars have spent 
half a life to estabHsh. In this way, with the needless burdens 
of the spelling book removed, the language of prophecy may be 
strikingly fulfilled — " The child shall die an hundred years old." 



320 OLD GREEK 

These spelling reformers are not looking for a miracle, or a 
sudden revolution. They well understand that language is a 
growth, and not a creation ; a growth of centuries, with its net- 
work of roots reaching back through all the history of our race. 
But as a living tree is made more symmetrical, thrifty, and 
fruitful by judicious pruning, so they beheve that a living lan- 
guage may be pruned and trained by skillful word masters into 
shapelier growth, and taught to meet the demands of the thinker, 
the scientist, the orator, the poet, the journalist, with increased 
vigor, economy, clearness, and beauty. 

The spelling reformers fully understand how hard it is to 
root out and exterminate the thistles of a corrupt dialect. They 
understand that the success of the spelling reform will destroy 
the value of large investments in dictionaries, spelHng books, 
and school manuals. They reaUze that millions of teachers and 
graduates from colleges and schools would find themselves 
relegated to the position of learners and unlearners — trying 
to forget what had been laboriously acquired, and trying to 
reconcile fingers and eyes and memory to simpler methods of 
spelling. They remember that millions of epitaphs in old ceme- 
teries and milKons of books in old libraries would never cease 
to utter silent protest. They are not unmindful that the spell- 
ing match would lose something of the high-keyed interest that 
belongs to a game of chance. 

These spelHng reformers also remember that each thirty 
years brings upon the stage a new generation of word users. 
They find comfort in thinking that the men and women of a 
new generation, trained at the mother's knee and in the schools 
to the simpler method of spelling words as they are vocalized, 
with one letter for each sound and one sound for each letter, 
will exult in their freedom, hke an athlete to run a race. When 
the rainy days come, and the long winter evenings, as they de- 
cipher the old editions of Shakespeare and Milton in some 
great-grandsire's hbrary, will there not be a new meaning in 
Desdemona's words : 

'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful. 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 32 1 

Possibly, also, those rainy-day readers in the great-grandsire's 
library may find a new meaning in Milton's words : 

" Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation 
rousing herself Hke a strong man after sleep, and shaking her 
invincible locks ; methinks I see her as an eagle renewing her 
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid- 
day beam ; purging and unseaHng her long-abused sight at the 
fountain itself of heavenly radiance." 

He was profoundly impressed with the civilizing 
mission of the English language, which he regarded 
as the coming world language, for reasons which he 
stated thus: 

It has been estimated that in the year 1978 the population 
of the United States will be upward of two hundred and fifty 
million. What an audience that is to be reached and influ- 
enced by a single author ! Yet two hundred and fifty million 
will not be the half of those who will then speak the Anglo- 
Saxon language, and draw the best daily nutriment of their 
souls from the Anglo-Saxon Hterature. 

It is claimed by foreign scholars that the leading language 
of the fiiture must fulfill two essential conditions : it must have 
enough of German and Latin to commend it to the Latin and 
Teutonic races ; it must be spoken by a good majority of civil- 
ized people. The English language alone fulfills these condi- 
tions. It fulfills them to-day. A hundred years hence they 
will be fulfilled much more abundantly. Our language is about 
half German and half Grasco-Latin. This can be shown by 
rigid analysis. Take one hundred words from one of Daniel 
Webster's orations, which may pass for a good sample of our 
best current English. Classify these words, according to their 
derivation, and fifty-one will be Graeco-Latin ; forty-nine will 
be Germanic, with here and there a vigorous word of 
Celtic or Gaelic origin. Forty-one of the Graeco-Latin words 
come to us through the French, many of them having crossed 
the channel with William the Conqueror in 1066. All the 



322 OLD GREEK 

Graeco-Latin words have inherent meaning; twenty-eight of 
the forty-eight German words will be essential particles, without 
inherent meaning. 

These are inside conditions that give our mother tongue a 
great advantage in the exciting struggle now going on between 
the languages of Christian civihzation. In copiousness the 
English language is without a rival. It has already more than 
one hundred and twenty thousand words, and every year is 
adding to its hospitable vocabulary. As our government wel- 
comes men of every cHme to the rights of citizenship, so our 
hospitable language welcomes words of every nation, so far as 
they are needed, to a place in its hterature. 

The superior claims of the EngUsh are due to its easy con- 
struction, to its catholic and cosmopolitan nature, to its readi- 
ness to assimilate words, idioms, and rhythms from other tongues, 
to its union of Graeco-Latin elegance with Germanic vigor in 
its wealth of thought and literature. Its universal adoption is 
retarded by its spelling and capricious pronunciation. For- 
eigners call it a cruelty to tax their memories with such need- 
less linguistic conundrums. Foreigners tell us that language 
should be made as easy as possible both for children and for 
ahens ; and that EngHsh ought to be written with some defer- 
ence to the laws of phonography. 

These foreign critics are not unreasonable. The law-defiant 
spelling of the English language is a monstrous cruelty to the 
human family ; and the time has come when scholars ought to 
say so, and begin the work of reforming a pedantic, absurd 
system of spelHng that fills our schoolhouses with needless 
misery, and keeps millions of EngHsh-speaking people in hfe- 
long bondage to the unabridged dictionary. * * * 

He brought his technical knowledge of the Greek 
and Latin languages to bear to demolish the common 
solecism that by dropping the silent letters in many- 
English words we shall destroy the traces of their 
identity and origin. He did not hesitate to make use 
of a gentle satire in driving home his point : 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 323 

After a Greekist has once recognized in the monosyllabic 
alms the crushed and mutilated remains of St. Paul's iXeri/xo- 
a-vvY), he is not unprepared for such mild reforms as are pro- 
posed by a convention of linguists who know how to read the 
inner hfe of a nation in its words ; who remember that 

Words are things, and a small drop of ink, 
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces 
That which makes millions think. 

The sacred debt our language owes to the ancient Greek 
increases with each advance in science, in philosophy, and in 
the art of expression. The plastic nature of the Greek fits it 
for meeting all the new exigencies of scientific nomenclature. 
Our poets must always find their rhythms and our orators their 
highest inspiration in the Attic masterpieces. This debt is 
neither repudiated nor ignored when we throw aside such an 
excrescence as the digraph pk in phlegm, phthisis, diphthong^ 
diphtheria, phantasm, alphabet, philosophy, philopena. In our 
fame and the \2X\x1 fama, the/ represents the ^ of the Greek 
(^tJ/xt; as truly as it would be represented \yy ph. 

If we can always ^^^^C^ fantastic with an/ why not its cognate 
phantom ? Italians and Spaniards spell their filosofia with a 
pair oifs, that have a look of honest independence. There is 
not the slightest danger that Italian and Spanish filosofos will 
ever forget the Greek birthplace of their chosen study. 

If we must retain ph in these words, because they come from 
the Greek, then/-^ should be displaced from cipher dcnd nephew, 
which coming from the French chiffre and nevue have some- 
how stolen the Greek livery. 

Our right to follow Shakespeare, in spelling vial with a v, 
though it comes from the Greek ^i6Xi], is as undoubted as the 
Frenchman's right to spell with an / his fiole, from the same 
root. 

If the Itahan has been forgiven for softening the phlegma 
and phthisis of his Latin forefathers into flemma and tisica, 
would not the society for preventing cruelty to children be 
justified in arraigning the spelHng books for such inhumanities 
as phlegm, phthisis, and hemorrhage ? 



324 OLD GREEK 

And while they are about it, they might as well insist that 
arraignment shall drop the French ^ as a silent letter, not to 
be found in its root. Arraignment should be as easy to prune 
as companion, formerly spelt with a silent g, from the French 
£ompagnion, Latin con smdpanis. 

In 1773 John Trumbull, while a tutor in Yale College, 
published a Hudibrastic poem, in which he sings " The Prog- 
ress of Dulness" through three cantos. One /was enough for 
"dulness" then; what has "dulness" done during the last 
century that it should be punished with a double / ? 

The argument in support of what is called historical spelHng 
is two-handed, and as serviceable to one party as to the other. 
In Richard Verstegan's " Restitution of Decayed Intelligence," 
published in 1605, that learned author anticipates one of the 
proposed reforms by ending with a single consonant such 
words as "ful," "hil," "od," and "shal." It is equally notice- 
able that Richard Verstegan spells "beeing," "boyes," "hee," 
" vattes," and "yeare " with a superfluous e, thus showing that 
if our language has lost in one direction, it has gained in 
another. 

In old English knowledge rhymed college to the eye, as well 
as to the ear. Do we sharpen the edge of our modern knowl- 
edge by padding it with a ^ ? 

Programme is comme ilfaut, if one is writing French, but pro- 
gram seems more at home in the society of its Greek half brothers, 
anagram, epigram, diagram, monogram, telegra^n. Consistency 
is a good thing, even in the spelling book. Germans have the 
advantage of us in knowing how to stop after they have com- 
pleted the phonetic spelling of katalog, dialog, and monolog. 
We cling, thus far, to the pleonastic French way of spelling 
these Greek derivatives, and we pay the cost in time, ink, pa- 
tience, independence. Sometimes we go beyond the French 
in padding with silent letters, as in haughtiness from hauteur, 
dispatch from depeche, parliament iiova parlement. 

If we stand fast for historical spelling, then economy, ecumen- 
ical, ether, must begin, as aforetime they began, with a diph- 
thong, like cesthetics. 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 325 

Rheumatism is a Greek word, but if we would spell it 
Greekishly, we must place the h at the beginning, where it 
would stand for the Greek aspirate, and where the Anglo- 
Saxon places it in hwilc from which we derive our which. 

The standard spelling of choir is so unphonetic and absurd, 
that botanists might call it one of the sports of our eccentric 
mother tongue. Coming down to us from the xo/sos of the 
old Greek theater, through the muddling strainer of Norman 
French, it is false to both ; equally false in spelling and pro- 
nunciation. The French chceur is not to be complained of 
here, if Parisians are satisfied. But the Anglo-Norman choir 
is a severe trial to American good-nature. Shakespeare's 
independence was shown by spelling this word two ways — 
twice Normanesquely, and thrice according to phonography. 
When he makes a verb of it, the Norman spelling seems too 
preposterous, and he tells us 

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed chenibims. 

But with phonetic spelling, how shall we distinguish between 
" a quire of angels " and "a quire of foolscap " ? If we do con- 
trive to make that nice distinction in rapid conversation, with 
words on the wing, will it not be " as easy as lying " when the 
visible words are before us in context, printed or written? As 
for etymology, verily the long and distinguished lineage of a 
cherubic quire, from the Greek xopo?> will not be more difficult 
to trace than that of a foolscap quire from the Latin quatuor. 
The highest linguistic authorities agree in declaring that our 
standard English spelling is unhistorical, inconsistent, unpho- 
netic, and not to be trusted as a guide to etymology. 

These homophonous words are not an element of strength 
or perspicuity. But they must be accepted as a part of our 
inheritance. Their homophony is not changed to the ear by a 
difference in spelling, and it only adds to the needless toil and 
worry of beginners, to retain such curious and exasperating 
eccentricities. 

Many English and American scholars have fallen into the 



326 OLD GREEK 

habit of condemning the etacism of the modern Greeks, who 
claim that they are justified in representing the sound of ee by 
six different letters, or combinations of letters, which in the 
time of Demosthenes must have been pronounced differently. 
These six vowels and diphthongs are 77, v, «, y;t, ot, vi. The 
monotonous effect of this etacism may be illustrated by a sen- 
tence found in Herodotus, 2. 69 : roto-t xapa o-<^tcrt yLvo/xevoLa-L 
KpoKoSecXoLcrL roLcn iv Trjcn alixacnrjcn. Like to the hissing of 
snakes, or a violin concert on one string, would have been the 
public reading of Herodotus after that fashion. 

But if a modem Greek, ambitious to read aloud Bryant's 
vivid and graceful version of Homer's Iliad, were to ask us by 
what law of analogy, or phonography, or derivation, the first 
and second syllables of mde differ in pronunciation; or by 
what higher law than mere caprice we harden the sch in 
scheme and schedule^ while we soften the sch, one way in 
schism and another way in schist^ both coming from the same 
Greek root ; or by what authority we difference the sound of 
ch in Charlotte, Charles^ character, choir, drachm (the last 
three of Greek origin) ; or why dead-head should have two 
digraphs and bed-stead only one ; or why we persist in dis- 
rhyming bound and wound, mind and wind, bowl and growl, 
precipice and sacrifice ; or what good reason there can be for 
rhyming to the eye, while disrhyming to the ear, such words as 
through, plough, hough, cough, borough, hiccough, and rough, 
we should have to admit the tough and thorough absurdity of 
the thing ; or, with a kind of Sophoclean irony, which a Greek 
would be sure to appreciate, we might say that this was EngHsh 
orthography, or " straight-spelling," just as a Virginia fence is 
the shortest line between two corners ; but so long as the spell- 
ing reform is but a patter of raindrops on the fathomless ocean, 
we must ask our ingenious Greek to take part with us in our 
difficult game of throughing and ploughing, houghing, coughing, 
boroughing, hiccoughing, and roughing. 

Ought we not to straighten out a few snarls in our mother 
tongue, before we send philological missionaries to the descend- 
ants of Aristotle and Longinus ? 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 327 

In one of his lectures, Doctor North paid this tribute 
to Josh Billings — his old-time student and friend at 
Hamilton College : 

Why is Josh Billings, alias Henry W. Shaw, whom the London 
" Spectator " has called the " American Montaigne," one of our 
favorite fireside authors ? Why is he equally popular on both 
sides of the Atlantic — popular with the peasant and the scholar, 
the kings of thought, the lovers of hearty laughter? It may be 
partly because he conceals much valuable wisdom under his 
ingenious cacography; because his rich vein of humor leads 
always to richer veins of hard, unalloyed common sense. It 
may be partly because his guerrilla spelling, springing from a 
basis of unorganized philosophy, is a good-natured protest 
against the unrighteous tyranny of the standard dictionaries, 
and a manly declaration of personal independence. Josh 
BilHngs says to our venerable Mother Tongue, as she sits on 
her throne of awful state, bulwarked about with millions of 
books and enthralled professors, " I will spell my words as I go 
to my dinner, by the shortest cut, and if that is treason to your 
majesty, make the most of it." Many a true word is spoken 
in jest, and Josh Billings hits the champions of unphonographic 
spelling between the joints of the harness. Train a class of 
quick-witted Germans, previously ignorant of our language, to 
spell according to the Josh Billings method; then introduce 
them to the dictionary method, and which of the two ways 
would they instinctively select as most in keeping with the 
eternal fitness of things? 

It is not to be inferred from these extracts that 
Doctor North v^as one of the radicals who advocated 
nev^r alphabets to represent phonetically the sounds of 
the English language, or believed in pushing forward 
the spelling reform without regard to the thousand 
considerations which must operate to make the modifica- 
tion a work of time and patience. He never committed 
himself beyond the ''five rules," so called, "all of 



328 OLD GREEK 

which," he wrote, " can be defended by historical prece- 
dent." These rules are : 

(i) Omit silent a in such words as health and head; (2) omit 
silent e after a short vowel, as in have, give ; (3) write / for ph 
in alphabet, phantom ; (4) omit one of the double letters in 
cliff, shall ; (5) change (?^ final to /, when it has the sound of /. 

So soon as these simple and sensible changes are recognized 
in the dictionaries and spelling books, the ultimate triumph of 
the spelUng reform is assured. Other needed changes will 
follow in their season. The results will be useful beyond cal- 
culation. It will be like substituting the friction match for the 
old-time tinder box, or the minie rifle for the continental 
musket, or the machine that quickly fills your granary with 
clean bright wheat for the Scriptural threshing floor, where 
slow oxen tread out the unwinnowed corn. 

" The spelling reformers are prepared for honest 
doubting," wrote Doctor North, "for the inertia of 
fixed habits, for conservative reluctance, for ridicule, 
and selfish opposition." But they were not prepared, 
at least he was not, for the antics of the agitators who 
sought to accomplish in a day what could only be done 
in many generations. As these agitators became more 
conspicuous in the movement. Doctor North gradually 
withdrew from it, not abating his faith, but apparently 
not enjoying the company in which he sometimes found 
himself. The address from which this chapter has 
chiefly quoted was written in 1878. How he felt on 
the subject in 1883, may be inferred from a letter he 
wrote his friend, Mr. C. W. Bardeen of Syracuse, in 
reply to a bantering note : 

April 13, 1883. 

My dear Bardeen : If you mean that the " spelling reform " 
is my foible, you may safely have called it by this time, a half 
foible — something growing by small degrees, and welcomely 
less. I have more faith in spelHng reform than the spelling 



LANGUAGE LOVER AND SPELLING REFORMER 329 

reformers. As a class the spelling reformers are wearisome 
fanatics, who stupidly ignore the fact that language is a growth 
and not a creation. They can not see how the pig can be 
roasted without burning the homestead. I do pity the children 
who are to-day sweating over the chaotic spelling book. This 
P.M. one of our Bulgarian students brought me a letter he had 
written in EngHsh. He could not understand why beHever 
and receiver should not rhyme in spelling as well as in speak- 
ing. There is this compensation, that our irregular spelling 
makes each English word a distinct power, with inherited rights 
and privileges. All this for you alone, and not for the public. 

Yours very truly, 

E. N. 



CHAPTER XI 
GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 

" HALFWAYUP " AND ITS TREES — ThE PLEASURES OF VACA- 
TION — The Lombardy Poplars — Some Poems on Trees — 
A Tribute to Andrew J. Downing — Philodendria — A 
Missionary to Farmers — Report on Planting Trees — 
Lawns — Greek Gardening. 

A PROFOUND love of nature, and a longing to be close 
to nature, was one of Doctor North's distinguishing 
characteristics. He drew from nature his inspiration, 
his recreation, and his chief happiness, next to that of 
home and profession. The love of nature revealed itself 
in his poetry, and in the topics and treatment of much of 
his prose writings. It revealed itself in his love for the 
home on the hillside, which he early named " Half- 
wayup," because it was situated on the curve of what is 
known as " Sophomore hill," just about halfway between 
the foot and the summit of the series of hills which are 
crowned by the college buildings and campus. When 
this beautiful home was first occupied by Doctor 
North, it was surrounded by twenty-five acres of rough 
farm land, in much the condition that nature made it. 
Gradually the terraces were built which slope down to 
the house, and from the house to the garden ; walks 
were laid out ; orchards, shrubs, and trees were planted ; 
hotbeds and arbors were constructed ; and in time it 
became the picturesque evidence of Doctor North's skill 
as a landscape gardener. Rev. William H. Teel, one 
of his boys, thus describes " Halfwayup " : 

330 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 331 

" The broad east veranda of his home gave view of 
*The landscape's shifting wealth of light and gloom.' 
Near and around, shadow-weaving, fruit-bearing, ornate, 
were * The trees that whisper hints of Paradise.' His 
home acres and nest were a nook and belvedere, in a 
real earthly paradise, beautiful, almost, as that which 
John saw. Vine-clad porch, sunny lawn, breezy pas- 
ture, hemlock-crowned hill, gave view of elm-embowered 
Clinton across the valley, the Oriskany silvering the 
meadow's edge, or gleaming out, 'neath a long serpentine 
trail of foliage, and the landscape broadening and soften- 
ing and purpling away toward the Booneton hills. The 
ascending roadway was bordered and ornamented by 
hedge and arbored seat and lawn and well-shaded homes 
with an air about them not of display, but of comfort 
and taste, and kindly welcome. The whole was jealously 
sentineled by lofty, gnarled, sinewy, lusty Lombardy 
poplars, singly or in rows, along the sidewalk." 

All the professor's spare time, during the first twenty- 
five years of his residence here, was passed in the gar- 
den and the orchards, indulging his fondness for flowers 
and trees. His passion for trees exceeded his love for 
flowers. He planted every variety that would live on 
the bleak hillside and was obtainable — fruit trees, 
shade trees, shrubs, and bushes. Every variety of fruit 
found a home in his orchards — apples, pears, plums, 
cherries, small fruits, quinces, grapes, and even oranges 
flourished there. He became an expert at grafting and 
budding trees, and was always on the lookout for new 
varieties as a result of the crosses he undertook. 

It was his special study to note what varieties of fruit 
were best suited to soil and climate, and promised the 
best rewards to his farmer neighbors. He used often 
to carry the results of his labors to the town and county 
fairs, and was proud of the premiums he brought home 



332 OLD GREEK 

with him. A newspaper notice of one of these exhibits 
(evidently written by himself) is worth reprinting for 
what it shows of his knowledge of pears : 

Professor North, of Clinton, exhibits twenty varieties of 
pears. Among them are Bartlefts, Virgalieus (free from 
blemish), and Seckels large enough to refute the only objection 
ever made to them. The specimens of the Summer Rose in 
this collection are small, and hardly worthy of the company 
they are in. Per contra^ the Flemish Beauties are immense 
Dutch-built pears, with carnation cheeks right pleasant to 
look at. A friend called our attention to the Stevens Genesee 
as a variety that promises to more than fill the place of the 
Virgalieu, which in most localities cracks so badly that fruit- 
growers are out of patience with it. We notice in Professor 
North's collection several French varieties grown on quince 
that deserve more attention than they have hitherto received 
in this country. The Gloire de Cambreone has a rare vinous 
flavor. Its shape, color, and size are suggestive of a small 
crookneck squash. The Compte de Laury, in spite of its 
thick, tough skin, is a rich, sugary pear of the first quality. 
This is said to be a regular and prolific bearer, as much so 
as the Louise Bonne de Jersey. The Napoleon and Beurre 
d'Amalis promise a " good time " to somebody, when they 
are fully ripe. Most of the fruit exhibited this year is be- 
hind the season in respect to ripeness. We are sorry not 
to see more samples of winter pears. At any season, pears 
help to make a paradise, but in winter they are especially 
desirable. When other fruits are gone, or scarce, a dish of 
the Glout Morceau or the Winter Nelis will offset quite a 
catalogue of the ills that hibernating flesh is heir to. 

Doctor North's journals contain many entries regard- 
ing the trees and flowers he planted, and they show a 
personal, fatherly interest in every one of them. Some 
of these entries reveal as much about the man as about 
trees and flowers : 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 333 

February 26, i84g. — The weather is still warm. In fact 
I heard the voice of a bird while going to chapel this morn- 
ing. A thousand pleasant thoughts and memories and antici- 
pations were wakened by that lone bird's voice of 

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
A box where sweets compacted lie. 

The sight of the brown turf as it tardily creeps out from its 
blanket of snow makes my fingers itch for spade and the 
iron-toothed rake. 

April 18, i8§o. — I have planted the American chestnuts 
and the filberts that I might have about the house reminders 
of the beautiful woods of Connecticut; that if I should 
ever be permitted to reach my second childhood it may be 
sweetened and refreshed by the sight and the shadow of trees 
similar to those with which my first childhood was familiar. 
The dear old woods of Connecticut, how I love to fancy that 
I am again threading their tangled paths, and shouting to 
my brothers through the leafy openings ! 

April 18, 1831 ' — I planted a barberry hedge between the 
little and the upper gates, about ninety feet. The ground was 
prepared by first removing the sod ; then spading in a heavy 
dressing of rotted manure ; and lastly spading in a layer of 
coal ashes. The rows of plants were set about one foot asun- 
der, after this manner : 



I chose to plant a barberry hedge for several reasons : 

1. It is a cheap fence. I planted the seed and raised the 
quicks myself. They were three years old last fall. 

2. The plants are rapid growers and hardy. They are 
tenacious of life, will grow in a hard soil, and are subject to 
no disease. 

3. They make a beautiful hedge. The bush itself presents 
a graceful appearance with its sheaf-shaped drooping head. 
Its flowers and berries are both highly ornamental. 



334 OLD GREEK 

4. They make a close, impervious hedge. The plant will, 
of its own accord, send out side shoots near the root ; and if 
headed back, will mat itself together as thick and fast as the 
hawthorn. Its many spines are sufficiently repulsive both to 
man and beast. 

5. Such a hedge is novel and American. Every gentleman's 
garden has a hawthorn hedge ; but a barberry hedge is some- 
thing not frequently happened upon. I have never seen one 
or heard of one. 

April ly, i8§2. — I have worked the last two days on a 
Haie Bizarre^ or fancy hedge, reaching from the big gate 
down to Mr. Lucas's corner. The principal thorns used were 
the barberry, which I raised from seed, the hawthorn bought 
for fifty cents per hundred, and the buckthorn bought for 
one dollar per hundred. They were set in three rows. With 
them I mixed all sorts of briers, and shrubs, and trees : such 
as the purple and white lilac, the honeysuckle, standard and 
twining, the blackberry, gooseberry, Missouri currant, horse- 
chestnut, mountain ash, almond, spiraea, etc. In preparing 
the ground, I first removed the sod, then spread a thick 
layer of rotted manure and dug it in deep. 

When I can find nothing better to do, I mean to write an 
essay on the " Pleasures of Vacation." I shall speak of them 
under a variety of heads, somehow thus : 

1. The pleasure of late rising, with no chapel bell and 
Greek recitation to drag you from half-finished dreams. 

2. The pleasure of reading storybooks on rainy days — 
forbidden in term time, because they spoil the relish for 
Homer. 

3. The pleasure of gardening all day long without inter- 
ruption. 

4. The pleasure of wearing old comfortable coats, out at 
the elbow and burst in the armpits, old easy boots, disdain- 
ful of blacking, veteran hats that give no headaches. 

5. The pleasure of being hungry and tired — making 
meals delightful, and sleep perfectly enchanting. Bookmen 
seldom know the farmer's sense of hunger. They eat from 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 335 

the force of habit and a feeling of duty. They are never 
tired, but only weary. Boys and workmen get tired ; students 
and gentlemen get weary. When one is tired with digging, 
sleep is inevitable ; when one is weary with study, sleep is 
often impossible. 

6. The pleasure of receiving your salary and paying your 
debts. 

May 12, 1832. — After dinner I went down to the banks 
of the Oriskany in Marcus Lathrop's meadow. I brought 
home roots of the clematis, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wake-robin, 
meadow violet, etc., also bladder-nut, button wood, and wild 
plum. Cherry blossoms are open. 

May ij, 1832. — After dinner I went botanizing with Pro- 
fessor Root. We rode up to Paris hill, and explored a 
swamp east of the village. Thence we brought the water- 
pitcher, or "gill cup," the cowslip, swamp honeysuckle, pine, 
arbor vitae, spruce, larch, andromeda, etc. 

May 5, 18'ji. — Heard two classes and attended the 
faculty meeting. Worked in the garden after dinner, and 
found joy in renewing old acquaintance with trees and shrubs 
and flowers and beautiful grass. 

With each child born a birthday tree was planted ; 
indeed there v^ras associated with every tree on the place 
some reminiscence or event which made that tree as a 
personal friend. In later years, when the trees grew 
large, overshadowed the house and brought shade and 
dampness, and needed to be cut to let in the sunHght, he 
could not make up his mind to part with them ; and they 
stood, year after year, until it seemed as if the home- 
stead was set in the midst of a primeval forest. Occasion- 
ally, making the best of it, he would direct the cutting 
of a vista between the trees, through whose arched and 
leafy walls long and sweet views of Paris hill and the 
Oriskany valley were opened up. 

His affection for trees often showed itself in rhyme, 
and there are preserved in this volume several poems 



336 OLD GREEK 

which voice his detestation of the man who can deliber- 
ately destroy a tree which has its place in the landscape, 
or with which some memory or association abides. Once 
he wrote : 

There was a time in our country's history when a man was 
respected in proportion as he had lifted up the ax against 
high trees. It was otherwise with the old Greeks. One who 
saw in every tree the symbol of a divinity, or who heard the 
voice of a guardian genius in the whisper of its leaves, would 
think twice before he doomed it to the destroyer's ax. 

His love for trees was voiced touchingly in a para- 
graph of his annalist's letter of 1891 : 

Talking Trees 

Amid the ruin wrought by wasting years, a few of the 
stately, historic trees of Clinton still remain, each of them 
decorated with jewels of precious memory. A few of the 
trees that gladdened freshman eyes fifty-four years ago are 
still a gladness and glory to this academic village. The 
returning graduate, forgetful that he is but a relic of his 
own youth, sees strange faces on the streets, strange modern 
dwellings where he looked for grass-grown vacancies. He 
hears strange voices in places that would know him no longer 
were it not for the remembered trees that give him a familiar 
welcome with their winking leaves. There are favorite 
veteran trees standing as memorials of a sturdy, pioneer 
generation, that seem to offer a special greeting. Among 
these favorite veterans — some of them with a hundred inside 
rings — are the elms that droop so hospitably and caressingly 
over the village walks ; the towering Clark-Wood sycamore, 
self-planted eighty years ago, with its white elbows warning 
the sophomore to beware the Oriskany's " bridge of sighs " ; 
the Kirkland elms whispering a benison on the Hillward 
way; the Hopkins linden, that makes a graceful bend in 
the Bristol road, under which Mark Hopkins rehearsed his 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 337 

Latin and Greek paradigms seventy-five years ago ; the 
spreading Farmington chestnut which the good Doctor Norton 
planted on his broad lawn eighty-five years ago ; the but- 
tressed poplars, shivering in their old age, and still pining for 
the softer airs of Lombardy ; the Harding hemlock, looking 
down serenely from its Pisgah summit: forever thrive the 
blessed historic trees of Clinton, and eternal suspension to 
the wicked ax that would harm them ! ^ 

The long rov^r of Lombardy poplars skirting the side- 
walk of the Senior hill especially appealed to Doctor 
North. He loved them, in spite of their ugliness. They 
supplied the refrain for one of his earlier college songs, 
written for the alumni meeting of 1850 : 

'Tis many a night since first we met 

Beneath that poplar tree. 
And there made glad the hours with talk, 

And laugh, and minstrelsy. 

Some notes in his journals record the otherwise lost 
history of these Lombardy poplars: 

Who planted the poplar trees on College Hill ? 

Doctor Bemon said of these trees, the morning after he 
addressed the .college societies, that they looked like Hebrew 
and Greek scholars, all hirsute and rigid with roots, idioms, 
and dialects. 

Miss Harriet Frost said of the same trees, after her first 
attendance at a college commencement, that they looked like 
a platoon of seniors, receiving their diplomas. 

The poplar trees are said to have been planted at the 
suggestion and under the direction of Miss Ehza Kirkland, 
daughter of the missionary, who was afterwards married to 
the present Doctor Robinson. 



1 This brief paragraph was made the basis of a beautiful series of illustrations 
published in 1891, by Margaret Landers Randolph, formerly of Clinton. 



338 OLD GREEK 

Mr. E. B. Lucas says that the road leading up College Hill 
was originally an Indian trail. A project was at one time 
set on foot for straightening the road by an opening on a line 
that would have crossed the site of Mr. Lucas's house. This 
project was defeated by those who had already built on the 
Flat. Prominent among these was Mr. David Comstock, 
father of General Comstock. Mr. Lucas says that the poplar 
tree in the center of our home lot was planted by Mr. Peleg 
Gifford, for a landmark. It stands on the original line of 
division between Coxe's Patent and Kirkland's Patent. This 
line runs northwest and southeast. Another landmark of the 
survey may be found at the corner where lands of Doctors 
Davis, Lucas, and North met. These facts were communi- 
cated to Mr. Lucas by Mr. Gifford who surveyed Coxe's Patent. 
******* 

Professor Asa Gray, LL.D., '60, comes to the rescue of the 
Lombardy poplar in its hour of peril, and gives good reasons 
why it should be allowed to live and earn its living. The 
removal of the poplars on College Hill would give pain to 
many gray-headed graduates who associate them with their 
happiest experiences. They were planted by Dominie Kirk- 
land and Charles Anderson in 1805, when the Lombardy 
poplar was very distingue and much sought after. In 1793 
Dominie Kirkland visited Philadelphia to solicit funds for 
the Hamilton Oneida Academy. He found the prominent 
men of Philadelphia greatly interested in the Lombardy 
poplar, which had been recently imported by President 
Jefferson. He was told that if he wished his new institution 
to thrive, he must root out the native, uncultivated trees, and 
introduce the classic poplar which the Augustan poets had 
immortalized. Some generous friend of education made a 
donation of young poplars, and they were planted on the hill, 
where a few of them still linger, not superfluous, so long as 
they save the expense of lightning rods, and perpetuate 
the memory of a national mania as curious as that for the 
Chinese mulberry. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 339 

It appears that there was at one time a feeling among 
the residents of the hill, which called for the removal 
of the Lombardy poplars. They were not only ugly, 
but dirty, with the constant drop of their decaying 
branches. It was this danger that gave Doctor North 
a keynote, when he was invited to deliver the poem at 
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Clinton Rural Art 
Society, in 1881. It was four poems in one, each 
poem in its own vein. The description of the view 
from the campus will appeal to every alumnus. The 
"Furnace Light," the subject of one of these poems, 
gleamed in Doctor North's eyes every night, as he 
locked the front door of " Halfwayup ** on his way 
from study to bed: 

The Ministry of Trees 

I sing the trees, ordained of God to preach 
Sermons more eloquent than pulpit speech. 
Trees have quick sympathies and tender voice. 
With hearts that leap for joy green trees rejoice, 
And mourn with mourning hearts. If soaring thought, 
Or hope, or love returned, or good deed wrought, 
With softest sunshine bathe your soul and eye. 
To all this sunshine trees make glad reply. 
The joy for which tongue finds no utterance 
Is voiced by laughing leaves in merry dance. 
Raptures that struggle at your lip for words 
From bending boughs are syllabled by birds. 
Should sore bereavement, pain, ingratitude * 

People your breast with sorrow's sullen brood 
Of wretched thoughts, and human accents rasp 
Your wounded spirit, and the proffered grasp 
Of friendship's hand seem insolent and hard, 
With no such rudeness will your peace be marred. 
When to " the resinous twilight " woods you wend 
For friendship's self without the selfish friend. 



340 OLD GREEK 

From whispering leaves and crickets' hum and grass 
Fragrant beneath your footsteps there shall pass 
Nepenthean balm so comforting that ere 
Your griefs are told they turn to holiest cheer. 



Eastward from the Litchfield Observatory 

Brothers in discipline for life's hard toil, 

Climb ye once more yon consecrated hill. 

With fervent passion deeper than glad tears, 

Ye love the hillside of your studious years : 

Its changeful landscape lives in vivid memories 

Of Summer's laugh and Autumn's gorgeous dyes ; 

Of poplars stretching palsied arms on high 

That mourn the softer gales of Lombardy ; 

The hushed grave-garden, pressed with lettered stone 

That hints the sorrow told to Christ alone ; 

The orchard rows in pink and snow-white dress, 

Exhaling flush June's fragrant promises ; 

The bride Oriskany, thro' meadows sweet 

Hastening with smiles her Mohawk spouse to greet ; 

The modest grammar school, where Virgil's spell 

Shows nature's tenderness is art's as well. 

That ancient grammar school, whose masters' line 

And scholars' roll with world-wide glory shine ; 

Remoter Houghton, where on skyward wing 

Young thought wins confidence to soar and sing ; 

The morning village calmly slumbering yet 

Beneath the night's mist-woven coverlet ; 

Long lonesome Paris hill, whose sons confess 

They love their Alba Longa's lonesomeness ; 

The city's clustered spires, with hills enzoned 

That lift blue crests to kiss blue skies beyond 

(Blue crests that beckon weary souls away 

To happy hunting grounds and play). 

All these go wheresoe'er your steps are bent 

Nursing your strength with wholesome nutriment. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 341 

The Furnace Light 



Steadily glows the furnace light, 

Gleaming undimmed thro' rain and night. 

It takes no rest in summer's heat : 

It laughs at winter's driving sleet. 

The sacred hush of Sabbath morn 

It mocks with gay, ironic scorn. 

It asks but food and still asks more 

Of black hard coal and blood-red ore. 

So war's dire hunger clamors, " Give me food ; 

Give hoarded wealth ; give heroes' warm lifeblood." 

II 

Steadily glows the furnace light, 

Gleaming undimmed thro' rain and night. 

In groaning agony below. 

With fiery, seething, endless throe, 

Riches are born in ringing bars, 

Riches to outfit wasteful Mars, 

To build smooth roads from farms to marts, 

To prosper all life's peaceful arts. 

So from sad war's red agony come forth 

Freedom and brotherhood to bless the earth. 



Dominie Kirkland's Poplars 



Don't fell the poplar, ribbed and grim 

It comes of stock historic ; 
Its voice is Time's cathedral hymn, 

Thoughtful and allegoric. 

II 

Like Homer's Nestor, it hath heard 
Both sire's and grandsire's voices ; 



342 OLD GREEK 

Today the generation third 
Its whispered lore rejoices. 



Ill 



It makes no claim to graceful airs, 
It asks no crown for beauty, 

It stands the sentinel of years, 
Emblem of patient duty. 



IV 



Top-dead its voice is still for war 
With winter's howling blizzards, 

Its spring leaves breathe excelsior 
To youthful " star-led wizards." 



Don't hold the poplar gray to blame 

For all earth's desolation : 
It never stabbed a friend's good nam^ 

Nor retained "wet damnation." 

VI 

It propagates no gossip's clack, 
Nor hints at motives sordid ; 

It never sneered behind your back, 
Then to your face applauded. 

VII 

It never hawked a brazen book 
Of thought in weak solution, 

A sham book you must buy, or look 
For endless retribution. 

VIII 

To vendors of false lightning rod 
It says, " Este profani 1 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 343 

Ye outrage filial trust in God 
With mercenary blarney ! " 

IX 

Itself a sober-sided tree, 

It nurses wit in walkers ; 
Hill-climbers climb the heights of glee 

Who erst were lowland talkers. 



It outwatched nameless starry worlds 

Ere Peters gave them labels, 
Or Smith astonished Houghton girls 

With house of seventeen gables ; 

XI 

Or Dwight had solved the mystery 

Of Rural Art's advancement, 
And glorified in history 

This water-logged commencement. 

XII 

It sent to rainy Hyades 

To overturn " the Dipper," 
And counsel waterproof booties 

In place of waltzing slipper. 

XIII 

It sent no comet rich in switch 

For astronomic guesses, 
To ride thro' night a broom-sticked witch, 

Whisking her horrid tresses. 



XIV 



O woman, in your hours of prayer, 
Plead for the poplar's pardon ; 



344 OLD GREEK 

Its bursting buds bring back the air 
Of Eve's unblighted garden. 

XV 

It helped old Scotland's bard to sing 

Your fancy's aspen lightness, 
Till others' pain and anguish bring 

Angelic strength and brightness. 

XVI 

Murdering the haunted poplar tree, 

You kill its hamadryad, 
You murder faith, hope, charity, 

Paul's ever-blessed triad. 

XVII 

It knew the sobs of Skenandoa, 

When Kirkland's gospel story 
Gave faith exulting wings to soar 

To realms of endless glory. 

XVIII 

Sweet Sabbath lessons it hath taught, 

Upward it lifts its fingers ; 
Upward directs the groveling thought 

That earthward drags and lingers. 

XIX 

Then live the poplar, ribbed and gray, 
Like freedom's banners tattered, 

That tell grandsons the bloody way 
Their freedom's foes were scattered. 

Two other poems about trees will appeal to Doctor 
North's hillside neighbors : 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 345 

The Anderson Elm 
M. V. B. A, 



To the home where robins can build unalarmed, 
And squirrels can gossip and chatter unharmed j 
Where the katydids tell in brisk monotone 
The tale they have told for ages long gone ; 
Where Pearmains and Kelseys grown red in the sun 
Tempt daughters of Eve to sinlessest fun ; 
The Anderson Elm breathes a birthday hail — 
Bad luck for the ax that elm to assail ! 

II 

To the home whose welcomes are cheery and warm, 
When refuge is sought from hunger and storm ; 
Where charity's hand, ever waiting to bless, 
Gives comfort for rags and joy for distress ; 
Where children may set the wide house in a roar — 
E'en children whose years outnumber fourscore ; 
The Anderson Elm breathes a birthday hail — 
Bad luck for the ax that elm to assail ! 

Ill 

To the home whose cloisters and nooks still know 
The greetings and laughters heard long ago ; 
Where friends now sleeping the dreamless sleep. 
In memory's hall old merriments keep ; 
Where light-hearted schoolgirls gladden the door 
With the same sunny faces their grandsires wore ; 
The Anderson Elm breathes a birthday hail — 
Bad luck for the ax that elm to assail ! 

IV 

To the home where bright silver curls confess 
Joy in earth's all-bountiful joyousness j 
Where sufferings past leave wisdom's rich prize, 
With deeper and tenderer sympathies ; 



346 OLD GREEK 

And eighty-eight summers find winter still sweet 
To one heavenward gliding with faith's fearless feet ; 
The Anderson Elm breathes a birthday hail — 
Bad luck for the ax that elm to assail ! 
College Hill, September 30, 1888. 



The Elm that Weeps 

In Mefnory of P. H. D. C, 

I 

Beneath the burdened elm that weeps, 
The weaver, Spring, weaves tapestries 
That bring no gladness to her eyes, 

Who on the yonder hillside sleeps ; 

And the weeping elm weeps all the more 
Beside her sorrow-shadowed door. 

II 

The robin seeks the elm that weeps. 
And vainly waits to hear her voice. 
Whose music made sad souls rejoice 

To drink the solace of her lips : 

And the weeping elm weeps all the more 
Beside her sorrow-shadowed door. 

Ill 

New blossoms deck the elm that weeps. 
Her heart that once their beauty saw 
And knew their Giver's gracious law, 

With earthly joys no longer leaps : 

And the weeping elm weeps all the more 
Beside her sorrow-shadowed door. 

IV 

Gleeful beneath the elm that weeps 

Are new-born eyes unused to guile. 
That would have loved her loving smile. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 347 

Now quenched, alas ! in cold eclipse ; 

And the weeping elm weeps all the more 
Beside her sorrow-shadowed door. 

"Halfwayup," May 14, 1884. 

His love of trees was a part of his religion. Here is 
his tribute to a pastor who shared this love : 

One of the tenderest memories of my own youth is that of a 
clerical tree-planter, venerable ahke for his years and his vir- 
tues, who had been ordained, half a century before, as the first 
pastor of a pioneer church, beneath the quivering leafy vault 
and in the long-drawn aisle of a forest sanctuary. That good 
pastor could indorse the poet's assertion, 

That nothing earthly can keep its youth 
So far as we know, but a tree and truth. 

This was one of the secrets of a long and prospered ministry. 
Throughout a quiet pastorate of forty years, and a life of eighty- 
seven summers, he kept up the electric glow and freshness of 
feehngs that belong to early manhood, by his obedience to the 
truth and his industry in caring for trees. His people well 
remember, and are fond of telling how it was with their first 
good minister. They are fond of telling how one of his first 
steps, after his settlement, was to purchase the fee simple of a 
few acres for a home, near enough to the church to hear its 
solemn bell knoUing a departed spirit ; yet far enough to give 
him a stated supply of pleasant walks and rides to and from the 
village meetings. His people are fond of telling how he used 
to bring home from his occasional visits to the East choice 
grapes cut in the orchards of his native place ; how he carefully 
set these in seedling stocks of his own growing. When he 
made pastoral visits, he would take along a few scions in his 
pocket, and teach the pioneer farmers how to propagate valu- 
able fruits by this easy process. If their fingers were stiff or 
clumsy, or otherwise busy, he would put in the scions himself, 
now and then dropping a quiet hint about the wild gentiles, who 
were grafted into the church of Christ, so as to partake of the 



348 OLD GREEK 

root and fatness of the olive. The productive fruit trees that 
were planted or grafted by this good pastor still stand as a 
living, eloquent symbol of the richer fruits annually gathered 
from the seed of his spiritual sowing ; seeds of holy thought 
and hopes of happiness in that pure and sunny clime, where 
he rests with the departed of his people, beneath Heaven's 
Tree of Life. 

Here is another tribute to a fellow tree-lover, Andrew 
J. Downing, the first of our landscape gardeners, to- 
ward whom Doctor North was drawn by this bond of 
sympathy : 

Were I called to name the American authors who have 
done the most to elevate the farmer's calling from a hated 
drudgery to a beautiful art, Andrew J. Downing would stand 
first and foremost. The youngest son of a small gardener on 
the beautiful Hudson, with habits so reserved and undemon- 
strative that no one suspected the rare qualities hid away in his 
nature, Downing grew up as a neglected seedling might have 
done in some out-of-the-way corner of his father's grounds, 
until its rich, ripe fruit caught the gaze of passers-by, and 
freighted the air with daintiest aroma. As a writer on trees 
and rural economy, Downing's equal can hardly be named in 
any language. 

Beneath the witchcraft of his quick, dramatic fancy, garden- 
ing, tree-planting, and farming were no longer a humdrum 
slavery to the soil, but a power mighty as Aladdin's lamp to 
make real the dreams of an exile from Eden : botany, chemis- 
try, geology, were no longer dry book-grubbing, but keys to 
unlock the mystic paradise that lies about us all through life's 
pilgrimage. The trees of the field and the forest were no 
longer tristia ligna, as Horace calls them, sorry logs, fit only for 
the sawmill, but were as men walking and talking, and making 
melody with their leaves to their Maker. 

His noblest monument is all about us, growing more beauti- 
ful as the seasons come and glide by. Wherever forests are 
respected and tenderly treated ; wherever roadsides are fined 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 349 

with maples and elms ; wherever schoolhouses are embowered 
in leafy coolness, and graced with live teachers who can teach 
the art of planting and grafting ; wherever the loved and the 
lost are laid to their last sleep in the still twilight of wooded 
slopes ; wherever churches are so built that the stone and the 
brick, the timber and the paint obey the will of a creative soul, 
and breathe the inspiration of religious sentiment, Downing's 
truest epitaph speaks to us from the living mausoleum of his 
own works. 

His love of trees led Doctor North to prepare a lec- 
ture in rhyme, first delivered in Yonkers, New York, in 
1852, and afterwards repeated many times. " Philoden- 
dria" was the longest of his rhythmical productions. 
The small part of the poem here reproduced contains 
another tribute to the Lombardy poplars. 

Philodendria 

As thoughtful maids, solicitous to please 
Some favorite swain, and bring him to his knees, 
First use their large talk, learned talk and strong, 
But failing thus, subdue him with a song — 
So I, with various doubtful efforts made 
To suit the public ear by lectures staid 
On Attic culture and on Roman laws. 
With ancient instances and modern saws, 
And on the arts and arms of Homer's time, 
Will now play my last card, and talk in rhyme. 

I talk of trees, the beautiful and grand ; 

Whose leaves shed fragrance cool from fairyland ; 

The mountain's brow with summer greenness wreathe, 

Frolic with gales, then die a brilliant death ; 

Whose flowers Heaven kindly spared, when curses rained 

On the thorn-planted earth, with sin-spots stained ; 

Whose lofty trunks, to child- and bard-hood's eye. 

Seem Atlas pillars, holding up the sky. 



350 OLD GREEK 

I talk of trees, the ministers to wealth, 
To beauty, comfort, elegance, and health ; 
Whose bark makes calico, when beaten thin, 
For tawny, savage brides to glory in ; 
Whose wholesome saps can better cure the ills 
That flesh inherits than the patent pills 
Which quacks concoct, and by the dozen sell 
To such as would be better when they're well : 
(Nor least, when those saps turn to rubber shoes, 
Blessing the feet that trample and abuse) ; 
Whose boughs give food to simple worms, that they 
Shrouds for themselves, for ladies' dresses gay 
May spin ; whose tissues yield a brighter hue 
Than Tyrian shells, or Joseph's garment knew ; 
Whose fruits some part of Eden's loss repair, 
Nor tempt with promised bliss when death is there. 

I talk of trees, the generous and leal 
Which live for us, and d)dng bless us still ; 
Which yield delicious shade at August noon, 
And warmth in winter, more delicious boon ; 
Which, true through life, share in the martyr's fame, 
And sing us cheerful songs, when wrapt in flame ; 
Which take uncounted shapes, and take them all 
For man, obedient to his every call ; 
Which build the bench whereon Toil earns its bread. 
The nabob's palace and the peasant's shed ; 
Which build the chest for holding miser's hoard, 
When heirs would revel, build the sumptuous board ; 
Which frame the artist's work, the schoolboy's slate. 
The maiden's mirror, and the farmer's gate ; 
Which build our cradles, o'er our dwellings wave. 
Then build our coffins, and adorn the grave ; 
Which draw support, like us, from the dull clod. 
Yet joy in hght, as we should joy in God. 

When our good sires their first rude hearthstones laid, 
In the dim moss-rugged aisles of forest glade, 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 351 

Their life was vexed by savages and trees. 

Those tomahawked their wives and children ; these 

Gave shelter for the murderers. The sun 

That quickens growth in soil it shines upon, 

Was half shut out by webs of leaf and bough ; 

While stubborn roots forbade the cleaving plow. 

War was declared against such enemies ; 

And they were felled — both red men and green trees. 

No doubt the war was waged with pious zeal, 

And prayers were put up by the men whose steel 

Was forced to human and to hemlock hearts 

Alike ferociously. Yet pity starts 

With tears and horror from this work of hate ; 

Their aim to kill, to burn, to exterminate. 

Mournful their victory ! The Indian's trail 
Had scarcely faded from the ravaged vale ; 
Scarcely had died the echoing crash that told 
The fall of forest monarchs, vast and old. 
Ere white men numbered with remorse too late 
The wrongs unchristian of the red man's fate ; 
And with their sorrow for the murdered brave 
They mourn the elm that wept above his grave. 
No earthly power can ever summon back 
The painted warrior to his forest track ; 
Yet toil and care the trees can reproduce, 
And bid them thrive for beauty and for use. 
No words of sorrow now can wake the dead ; 
Yet could they bid the willow shade his bed. 
Mine were the task to exorcise a curse, 
And words of wail should sadden all my verse. 

Trees are not worthless, in their proper sphere 
(From some shrewd, calculating friend I hear), 
Save willows and old poplars which are just 
One pest, deserving but to bite the dust. 
My heart beats quick with honest rage, I own, 
When trees are flouted in this sneering tone. 



352 OLD GREEK 

God gave no tree to this broad, goodly land 

Which men should dare call mean, unfit to stando 

Each hath its separate mission, beauty, grace ; 

And if but planted in appropriate place, 

Will prove its fixed, inalienable right 

To breathe and flourish in the sun's glad light, 

True, barren willows o'er the pea-patch bent 
Were belles in muslin to the kitchen sent ; 
But where white flocks and panting oxen stoop 
To drink from springs, there let lithe willows droop. 
Hard were the man, and stupider than hard, 
Who leaves his pastured kine with nought to guard, 
Tho' suffering meekly, from the wilting sun ; 
When willows planted where the streamlets run, 
Quickly would broad refreshing shadows throw 
And cheer the herd that chew the cud below. 

E'en the stiff exiles dragged from Lombardy 

Here and there in broken ranks we see, 

Like relics of some revolution- fray 

In the botanic world, ragged and gray ; 

Or like unwedded damsel of uncensused age 

Lagging superfluous on the social stage ; 

These will pay handsome rents in food for fire 

On land so mean that sorrel would expire. 

Of both then let us less unfairly think : 

One is a Rechabite, and asks but drink ; 

The other's beauty years and storms deface. 

Yet numerous children rise to fill her place. 

Poplars and willows have their right to be ; 

But hke some of our human family. 

Who for their color meet reproach and shame. 

They need defense ; and here I urge their claim, 

A poplar tree that flings its shadow o'er 
The pathway leading to a shrine of lore. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 353 

Your Rhymer long has known, and loved as long. 

He loved it when Greek eloquence and song 

First chained his spirit, and to books a slave, 

With pale cheek omening an early grave, 

Its constant fingers pointed to the sky, 

And bade him seek for priceless wealth on high. 

He loved it for the hint repeated oft 

By its stiff, moss-grown trunk and leaves aloft 

Humming with laughter, that firm gravity 

Of years with sprightly humor may agree. 

He loved it when its wintry shadow lay, 

A bar of blackness full across the way. 

On moony nights, and each iced breeze-bent spar 

Tipped him a merry wink, as fast and far 

His arrowy sled shot down the curving road 

Outstripping e'en the shoutings of its load. 

In days of graver toil, he loves it yet. 

When his own children shun the August heat, 

And testing taste its grassy shade within. 

Hold telltale buttercups beneath the chin. 

Ye loveher trees that grace the landscape's view, 
No tame, half-hearted words shall plead for you ! 
Words were too public, with their utmost skill 
To paint the blessedness your boughs distill. 
Rhyme would but emulate a stuttering girl, 
If urged to tell how grandly stiff oaks hurl 
Defiance to the blast ; how lovingly 
Old elms brood o'er the clover-scented lea ; 
How meekly maples their full breasts submit. 
When men would drain them with the spile and bit ; 
How too they play oif jokes, when seeds they raise, 
And hang out sheep-shears in sheep-shearing days ; 
How fondly beeches to their old robes cling, 
Even when they hear the steps of coming spring, 
Sighing their withered, storm-bleached leaves to drop. 
Though soon to flaunt a green and richer crop, 



354 OLD GREEK 

(As mothers not less deeply mourn the dead, 
When living babes are clamoring for bread) ; 
Or how coned cedars, near some icy stream, 
Forget that they are trees-of-Hfe, and gleam 
All hoary with the water's frozen breath. 
Like sheeted ghosts, cold, silent trees-of-death ! 
O sad the thought, that forms so fair should feel 
The stroke of axman's keen, remorseless steel ! 
Trees furnish us with fuel, timber, fruit ; 
Yet not for this alone I press their suit. 
They have their language, sympathies, and voice ; 
With hearts that leap for joy, they can rejoice ; 
And mourn with mourning hearts. * * * 
While anger incubates its thoughts of scorn 
Sweet nature smiles, and charity is born. 
Men's hearts to fullest happiness aspire. 
Yet oft repulse the boon they most desire. 
Men's hearts oft swell with yearnings for repose. 
Yet spend their strength in manufacturing woes. 
Else, would they reach for Discord's fatal prize, 
Would Sodom's bitter fruitage cheat their eyes, 
When Rural Art has but to wave its wand. 
And lo ! a Paradise on every hand ? 
Else, would they toil ambitious brows to shade 
With palms that turn to thorn-wreaths as they fade, 
When every tree they choose to plant will fling 
A comfort to the heart that leaves no sting? 
Else, would they heap up unclean wealth to buy 
The lofty marble's venal eulogy, 
While orchards bent with blushing fruit 
Breathe spicy praise no envious lips dispute? 
Else, would they man-made garish cities crowd, 
And fret through hfe to wear an early shroud, 
When nature spreads her arms of oak and fir 
To welcome home the unhappy wanderer? 
No effort of the muse is thought complete 
In modern days, unless its lamer feet 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 355 

Are tickled with illustrations dragged from far, 

Notes, glossaries, extracts, et cetera. 

Good Andrew Marvell, Milton's friend in need, 

To trees and flowers was also friend indeed ; 

Although his own poor thoughts the less may shine, 

The bard a borrowed gem would intertwine. 

Not such are we who meet once more to twine 

Fresh wreaths of homage for this rustic shrine. 

Fondly the glorious bards of other days 

Have wooed the inspiring trees and hymned their praise. 

Like youth's love tokens in some volume dear, 

Each tree recalls a nam.e if not a tear. 

Good Homer loved the elm, that graceful type 

Of the mixed thoughts that warbled from his lip ; 

Thoughts high enough to catch the ear divine. 

Yet bending down to kiss the cheeks that pine 

In lowliest grief. Dark waves the sad elm tree 

Where sleeps the sire of fair Andromache. 

Sweet Sophocles beneath the olive's shade 

Wooed now the muse and now the Attic maid ; 

Quaffing the incense of a nation's praise, 

Yet loving more the orchard linnet's lays. 

Calm gHded on his years to green fourscore ; 

And when foul slander charged that now was o'er 

His song-gift's majesty and reason's reign, 

He seized his lyre, and in a deathless strain 

Hymned the dark grove whose hallowed whisperings 

Woke his young thoughts to soar on music's wings. 

The fame of Avon's bard the oak keeps green 
Whose acorn cups sheltered his fairy queen. 
Would fancy bring his oddest shapes in sight ; 
Fat Falstaff, armed with horns, yet not for fight; 
Dame Quickly, sharp for fees and number one ; 
The Merry Wives intent on serious fun ; 
French Doctor Gains and Welsh Parson Hugh, 
Raging to thrust each other's vitals through, 



356 OLD GREEK 

Yet only mauling the good English tongue ; 

Would fancy see all these in piebald throng, 

It hies to Heine's oak, where Shakespeare's nod 

Bids them to gambol on the torch-lit sod. 

The hawthorn, gayly decked, though disciplined 

With careful shears, stern Milton calls to mind ; 

Who, hedge-tree-Hke, severe yet flowerful bard. 

Stood nobly forth as Truth's and Freedom's guard, 

Piercing their foes with thorns of bitter wrath. 

While shedding song's perfume on virtue's path. 

Where'er your home, fail not to plant your trees. 

If young, plant them that when your aged knees 

Shall weary of the weight they long have borne. 

And Heaven's sweet hope shall fill its brightening hour, 

Your eyes may joy to read youth's memoirs writ 

In the green orchard groves, 'neath which you sit ; 

That shadows cast by coming death before 

May melt in softer elm shades at your door. 

If manly hopes and cares your heart engage. 

Let trees each hope sustain, each care assuage 

With such delights as sinless Eden knew. 

And wealth that coins itself from sun and dew ; 

With fruits which in your own thoughts might provoke 

Such strife as Eve's mythic apple woke, 

Breeding the doubt which wish should win the day, 

The wish to eat, to sell, or give away. 

Did not the generous harvest discord end, 

And yield enough for market, self, and friend. 

If old, still love earth's trees : plant them the more ; 
That when you leave time's ice-bound shore. 
The haunts that knew you once may know you yet, 
And speak the praises men might else forget ; 
That sons and grandsons may your kindness feel. 
And at your grave with tearful reverence kneel ; 
That oriole's nuptial songs in quavering flood, 
And high-born perfumes swept from bursting bud, 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 357 

Leaf harps wind-stirred and streamlet's bubbling laugh 
May oft repeat your noblest epitaph. 

And this his message would the poet press 

On all who own their rood of soil, or less : 

Plant it with trees ; make it all green and gay ; 

A place where mated birds keep holiday ; 

Where sunlight shivers in rich-fruited bowers, 

Playing bopeep with humming birds and flowers ; 

Where through the long grass bearded rabbits wade 

And dappled toads sweat in the locust's shade ; 

Where doves coo out, unharmed by hunter's gin, 

One honeymoon, to coo another in ; 

Where children's laugh so clearly, sweetly peals, 

The mother more than girlhood's gladness feels ; 

Where sires give furlough to their iron sway. 

And half forgetful that their locks are gray. 

Make willow whistles ; then 'twixt laugh and kiss, 

Explain how dearly Franklin paid for his ; 

Where trees lend speech to things that else were dumb, 

And ragged rocks grow eloquent of home. 

Plant trees; but plant not all for self: beside 
The highway plant, that when the hot noontide 
Comes on, then dusty travelers may drink 
The coolness of their shade, and lingering think 
Of you, the planter ; that tired teams may stay 
To thank you, in their wordless, sincere way. 

Nor let the schoolhouse be remembered last, 
Where Hfe-long joys or griefs are treasured fast ; 
There let sweet walnuts, elms, mulberries spring, 
And gladlier will childhood's laughter ring. 
Doom not young hearts to all the untold pain 
Of studious tasks that vex the throbbing brain, 
Unsolaced by one window-shading tree 
That Hkes to stoop and look in smilingly. 



358 OLD GREEK 

The peaceful churchyard too, let trees adorn : 

Plant them beside the graves of those you mourn, 

But plant not trees alone ; in your own breast 

Plant seeds of holy thought, and hopes of rest 

In that pure, sunny chme, where no rough gale 

Scourges the golden-fruited grove with stinging hail. 

Where angel wings forever waft dehght 

To hearts kept warm with all-pervading light ; 

Where mortal agony and sinful strife 

Are all forgot beneath Heaven's Tree of Life. 

As once in Eden's love-lit fruitful bowers 

Ere sin's dark blight mildewed its thornless flowers, 

God's welcome voice was heard among the trees, 

So let our hearts, as sunset's bathing breeze 

Toys with the tresses of the maple grove 

Catch whisperings of Heaven's own peace and love. 

As with their roots fast anchored in the clay 

Our trees reach skyward their unsullied spray, 

So let our toil, while prisoned to the sod, 

Seek truest riches in the smile of God. 

Doctor North's services to mankind in teaching how 
to study and understand nature, how to draw the most 
and the best from her soil, how to appreciate her gifts, 
and especially the gift of trees, were no less important 
than those he rendered as teacher and professor. 

He regarded himself as a sort of missionary to the 
farmer ; an apostle to teach him how to appreciate the 
beauties and the opportunities of his surroundings; how 
to extract from the hard and routine drudgery of an 
agricultural life, something of beauty and of inspira- 
tion. He felt that same sympathy and fellow-feeling 
for him that he felt for the teacher. He loved to paint 
a picture of the farmer's life, with all the coarse and 
trying things left out, and all the others glorified. He 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 359 

was wont to describe himself as a farmer like the rest 
of them ; he boasted of his little farm, and what he had 
been able to accomplish with it. He attended farmers' 
institutes, agricultural dinners, fairs, and other gather- 
ings, saying that he came, not as the representative of 
Hamilton College, but as the representative of twenty- 
five acres of land, which he was endeavoring to culti- 
vate, and to show that bodily and mental labor might 
appropriately go hand in hand. This fellow-feeling for 
the farmer endeared him to his neighbors for miles 
about, and they were frequent and always welcome visit- 
ors at " Halfwayup." 

But his influence was wider than his home environ- 
ment. His correspondence reveals that numberless 
invitations came to him to deliver the annual address at 
state, county, and local fairs, most of which he was com- 
pelled to decline. But on several occasions these invi- 
tations were accepted. Here is a sample of one of his 
impromptu speeches, made at a farmers' dinner in 
Oneida county : 

I am only a Greek and Latin man, and in the presence 
of so many intelligent and thrifty cultivators of the soil of 
Oneida, the better part of eloquence, so far as I am con- 
cerned, would be a discreet silence. Nevertheless, if city 
lawyers, politicians, doctors, and merchants can talk about 
farms and farmers, why not a Greek and Latin man from the 
country ? I own, and cultivate after a fashion, a few acres, 
and if this makes my title clear to a place among the farmers, 
I thank my stars and take courage. 

Whether from the city or the country, we have the strong- 
est reasons for rejoicing that there is such a thing as the 
farm, and such a class in society as farmers. In these 
times when twenty per cent dividends prove to be gas, and 
the gas goes out, the safest and best stock, as I calculate, is 
the stock that runs on four legs — always excepting that 



36o OLD GREEK 

peculiar Wall Street breed, which the poet Saxe berates as 
" the bulls and the bears of mammon's fierce zoology." 

In these times that try men's souls, when bank shares are 
bubbles and factory shares a nightmare, the man who stands 
on a farm that he has paid for, and is willing to work, is the 
man to be envied. The fine phrases we hear about mer- 
chant princes and railroad kings are well enough when 
discounts are easy ; but in the long run the safest patent of 
nobility belongs to the king of two stout hands that are not 
afraid of the plow. Happy is the man that is in such a 
case — the man who with stout muscles and a hardy spirit is 
content to do his part in the working out of our national 
destiny. 

There can be no prosperous cities and no high civilization 
without thriving husbandry and high-minded farmers. The 
country is always full of the stuff that cities are made of. 
The city is indebted to the country, not only for its brick and 
straw, its timber and food, but for its substantial citizens. 
Whence come the civic heroes who manage the vast concerns 
of commerce, trade, and enterprise ? Not often do they come, 
I fancy, from the sickly ranks of those whose only industry is 
to toil and spin through the midnight waltz, but rather from 
the quiet farms on the distant hillside. After all, the most 
valuable product of the farm is its growth of hardy men and 
women. The best part of an agricultural show to one of 
thoughtful habits is a part for which no premiums are pro- 
vided, because, fortunately, none are needed. I mean the 
show of superior farmers, who know their rights, and know- 
ing dare maintain them ; who are always ready to sell their 
crops at a fair price, but never their votes at any price. 

In 1863 his neighbors invited him to make an address 
at their Kirkland town fair, being the second exhibition 
of the kind that had been held in the town. The talk 
which Doctor North made to his neighbors on this 
occasion showed his familiarity with fruits, his love of 
the garden, his love for his neighbors, and his love for 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 361 

his country ; and some portions of it are here quoted, as 
representative of another phase of his literary work. 

The history of the town of Kirkland is closely linked with 
a history of the fruit trees that give both adornment and 
endowment to the first gardens that were planted here by 
pioneers from Connecticut. Cut down one of the old apple 
trees planted by Eli Bristol, and a counting of the rings in its 
trunk will carry you back to the year when Baron Steuben 
rode up College Hill to lay the cornerstone of Hamilton 
Oneida Academy. Kirkland had the good fortune to be set- 
tled by men who were lovers of the garden and fine fruits. 
The horticultural tastes and habits of these early settlers are 
so strikingly reproduced in the horticultural tastes and habits 
of their descendants, and these tastes are so fragrantly illus- 
trated in yonder Dianas, Rebeccas, and Delawares, that one 
is tempted to quote the scriptural proverb, with an accommo- 
dation, and to say of them, " The fathers have eaten sweet 
grapes, and the children's teeth are notsQt on edge." ^ ^ ^ 

There is another and much higher sense in which the gar- 
den is a school. It is full of most significant and impressive 
emblems, types, analyses, and suggestions. Almost any day 
of the year you may hear it said that our schools are a snare 
and a humbug; that an academic town like ours is a place 
where young men and women are spoilt ; a place where they 
are feloniously robbed of their individuality, and then sent 
out into the world like a bag of buckshot, with their corners 
rubbed off, and all alike. They tell us, with no attempt at 
fault-finding, that a college is a place where young Shake- 
spearean swans and Homeric eagles are brought down to the 
flat degradation of very ordinary birds. Go into a nursery 
and see the refutation of this charge. The nurseryman will 
point you to long, straight rows of pear trees, that have been 
raised from the seed. If he lets them keep to their native 
individuaUty and come into bearing, one in a thousand may 
chance to be a good pear. The rest will be as chance 
decides, bad or indifferent. The nurseryman preferred a 



362 OLD GREEK 

profitable certainty to a lottery with so many blanks. He 
grafts the seedlings, and makes it sure that every one that 
lives will be a Bartlett or a Flemish Beauty. So it is with 
your sons and daughters. 

Let them grow up as seedlings without education, or leave 
them to the chances of self-culture, and one in a thousand 
may be a Horace Greeley or a Susan B. Anthony. Give 
them the best advantages for discipline, and each one, with 
rare exceptions, will grow up with the tastes, if not the genius, 
that shall put them on the same platform of intelligence and 
sympathy with a Daniel Webster and an Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. 

At the same time, there will be peculiar dangers attending 
this high culture, just as the grafted pear has its peculiar dis- 
eases, to which the seedling is not liable. The grafted pear 
has a finer organization, and is more sensitive to heat and 
cold than the seedling. 

It is liable to attacks of the fire blight and the frozen-sap 
blight. If it grows too rapidly in a stimulating soil, you may 
find it, at the close of a hot summer's day, with leaves with- 
ered and black, or the early frost may seize upon its soft 
immature wood, congeal its vital sap, and change it to a fatal 
poison. It is not otherwise with our educated youth. The 
overworking of a sensitive brain may bring on a variety of 
diseases ; or the sudden chill of an ungrateful, hypocritical 
gainsaying world may freeze the genial currents of the soul, 
and ally the fate of the youthful aspirant to that of poor Keats, 
with his life " snuffed out by a Quarterly." 

We do not give up the growing of fine pears, because the 
fire blight and the frozen-sap blight claim their part, nor 
should we give up the thorough education of the young, for 
the reason that a few prove too weak to resist the frailties of 
human nature or the temptations of the world. We should 
rather renew our vigilance and our efforts to make the pro- 
portion of failures as small as possible, and should aim in the 
future, as we have done in the past, to keep this village of 
Clinton an attractive center of the best facilities for educa- 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 363 

tion — a place where our sons may become strong in all that 
is manly, and where our daughters may be polished after the 
similitude of a palace. 

* ^ * In OUT peaceful enjoyment of this harvest-home holi- 
day ; in our good-natured rivalry with fruits and flowers from 
the garden, with live stock from the farm and work of cunning 
fingers from the parlor and the shop, we ought not to forget 
that our kinsmen and neighbors and friends, some of whom 
were with us a year ago, are now exposed to quick, unnatural 
death on distant fields of heroic strife. Yet how easy to lose 
thought of the war at a place like this, where all nature about 
us is so eloquent of peace, so suggestive of good will among 
men ! In all these broad green fields you hear no sound of 
angrier strife than the noonday ticking of emulous crickets 
and katydids. In all these brilliant woods you see no shallow, 
half-covered graves. There is no smell of human slaughter, 
no kind of mourning and lamentation. October, as if it were 
the Joseph of the months, is arrayed in its coat of many colors. 
The trees are gayly robed, as for a carnival. 

The gentian's sweet and quiet eye 
Looks through its fringes to the sky. 

The birds have sung their cheerful good-bys, unconscious 
that their flight to warmer latitudes would be over armies 
that are deciding the sublimest, bloodiest issue in the history 
of our race. Throughout those golden, misty, pensive days 
of autumn, when the chill of sudden sunsets tells us the aged 
year is soon to die ; while we are filling our barns and cellars 
with stores for the winter, let us be thankful to God that we 
are permitted to uphold our country's flag and our Union's 
integrity, without sacrificing the prosperities of the farm and 
the workshop. Let us be devoutly thankful that with us the 
sanctities of the church and the fireside are not touched by 
the blight of war ; that our gardens and farms and cemeteries 
are not trampled by the heels of rapine. The festival we 
keep to-day may remind us of a promised era, when swords 
shall be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning 



364 OLD GREEK 

hooks. In the late flowers of the garden, happy insects are 
murmuring idyls of peace. The flowers themselves are a 
prophecy of peace. Without shrinking from the duties 
and self-denials of a true patriotism, let us ask God to ful- 
fill the prophecy, and to send us the peace. 

Dawn of a broader, whiter day, 
Than ever blessed us with its ray, 
A dawn beneath whose purer light 
All guilt and wrong shall fade away. 

Doctor North frequently prepared papers for the 
Clinton Rural Art Society — an organization which has 
done as much perhaps, in its history of forty years, 
as any similar institution in the country to inspire a love 
of nature and to teach how practically to apply it in 
the beautifying of homes and villages. Doctor North 
joined with such nature lovers as Professor Oren Root, 
Rev. A. Delos Gridley, and Edward P. Powell in keep- 
ing the Rural Art Society alive and effective during all 
these years. Extracts from three of these papers fit 
appropriately into this chapter. 

Report on Planting Trees 

Most men are anxious to make a comfortable provision 
both for their own old age and for the tender years of their 
children. This anxiety will sometimes deepen and strengthen 
until it gains the force of a ruling passion. Its votaries will 
rise early, sit up late, and eat the bread of economy, contriv- 
ance, and extreme toil, to the end that they may place them- 
selves in independent circumstances and be free from the 
pinchings of want. One is ambitious to acquire title deeds, 
and to own more acres than his eye can see over ; another 
has a ravening appetite for dividends, and is covetous of 
stocks, shares, and mortgages. The pursuit of this kind of 
property is so attractive and engrossing that its perils are 
often overlooked or disregarded. The danger that banks 
may fail, that bubble shares may burst, and stock companies 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 365 

declare assessments instead of dividends is by many made 
little account of. The danger that their children may be 
ruined, body and soul, by the wealth which they are toiling 
so sedulously to accumulate seldom enters their calculations. 
The danger that in the very act of making provision for an 
old age of happy independence they are wholly unfitting 
themselves for any other enjoyment than that baser sort 
which springs from the excitements of speculation and trade 
is almost always overlooked. 

If there is any better way of securing a competence for 
one's declining years, it is certainly worth knowing. That 
there is a better way, I, for my part, have no doubt — a way 
which may be expressed in two monosyllables: 

PLANT TREES 

The man who plants a tree of some desirable kind, in 
soil to which he has a clear title, makes an investment at- 
tended with fewer hazards and firmer hopes than he who puts 
his faith in scrip, and bonds, and rent rolls. It has been 
proved by repeated trials, and is a matter of statistical record, 
that of those who engage in the greater adventures of mer- 
cantile business and speculation a very large proportion end 
their days in the sorrows of bankruptcy. No such fearful 
risk is run by him who is content to own a few acres, to 
stock them with choice trees, and then to confide cheerfully 
in a good Providence for the storms and sunshine which are 
requisite for the growth and ripening of the fruitage. 

The original cost of a fruit tree is but trifling if procured 
from a nursery, and almost nothing if raised from the seed ; 
it occupies only a wee bit of ground ; the amount of atten- 
tion which it needs is comparatively small; yet when it 
has reached its maturity, it will yield an annual revenue of 
sometimes $10, sometimes $20, and, in rare instances, even 
$50. Doctor Hastings of our village owns a Virgalieu pear 
tree, the fruit of which netted him, last autumn, ^50, equal to 
the interest on $700. * * * 

We all flatter ourselves that we are shrewd enough to know 



366 OLD GREEK 

when we are well off, that we are competent to look after our 
own interests. We take fire with indignation if anything 
contrary to this is hinted at. But are we not sometimes a 
little singular in our way of manifesting this shrew^dness and 
self-sufficiency ? While the annual profits of our farming are 
allowed to be small — in some cases barely sufficient to meet 
our yearly expenditures — we yet toil on, year after year, in the 
old beaten track, doing this season the same work which we 
did last season ; expecting to repeat the process next season ; 
and so on until our limbs are stiffened by age, and we are 
thus compelled to resign the plow and the hoe to our succes- 
sors. Now, without supposing it possible to carry forward 
the operations of a farm in any other way than by repeating 
each successive year the work of the last, is it not both 
possible and feasible for us, as we advance in years and lose 
the vigor of youth, to gradually release ourselves from the 
necessity of cropping a large number of acres, without di- 
minishing, at the same time, our yearly income ? I am odd 
enough to fancy that it is. I am odd enough to fancy 
it practicable for every farmer to adopt a course which 
will greatly lessen his toils', as years grow heavy upon him, 
while at the same time his revenue wdll steadily increase. 
If a farmer at the age of twenty-one has the good sense 
and forethought to plant as many choice fruit trees and to 
tend them properly, it is reasonable to anticipate that when 
he arrives at the age of forty, they will yield him several 
hundred dollars of annual profit ; and as they will require 
at this age but little care, their owner is at liberty to retrench 
his more laborious operations on the farm, without curtailing 
his means of support. He has made a horticultural invest- 
ment, if the expression suits, and with the smile of Providence, 
without which no enterprise will succeed, the dividends may 
be expected in their season. 

But this matter deserves to be looked at in a light less 
sordid, a light more pure and holy than that reflected from 
silver and gold. There is a moral, a social, and a civil good 
connected wdth the culture of trees, in comparison with which 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 367 

the question of profit and loss shrinks away out of sight. 
Our first parents were placed by their Creator in a position 
best fitted for the cultivation and enjoyment of their moral 
and social susceptibilities. They were placed in a garden, 
and their employment was " to dress it and to keep it." 
Their home was among trees *' pleasant to the sight and 
good for food," which " the Lord God made to grow out of 
the ground." Human life, at its best estate, was a life among 
trees. And we are here presented with another case which 
may be added to the many others, in which extremes meet. 
As a life in the wild forest is the greatest remove from 
civilization, so that among cultivated trees is the most refined 
and polished. If we wish to bring back our spirits to some- 
thing of that purity and calm enjoyment, something of that 
freedom from social strife and corroding envy which made 
Eden a type of Heaven, the perfection of earthly bliss, we 
must not neglect the culture of trees. 

To hoard one's earnings, and gloat over them in secret, is 
mean and miserly. To invest some portion of them in trees 
is provident and self-ennobling. To amuse one's self in caring 
for a tree's necessities, in ministering to its appetites and 
development, in protecting it from vicious insects, from the 
blasts of winter, and the fervors of Sirius ; and finally to 
rejoice over the rich, ripe, and ruddy returns which it ought 
to make for all this solicitude, is a pleasant care that leaves 
no rust in the soul. It rather tends to open the heart and 
let in the sunshine of generous emotion to its sullenest re- 
cesses. It teaches faith in the goodness of Providence. It 
teaches one to adore that Infinite skill which erects the 
stately tree from the crude soil, which causes the vital sap 
to run on its errand from root to leaf, and the savory, luscious 
fruit to emerge from the fragile blossom. 

The social value of trees is also immense. They render 
home lovely and attractive. They supply children with 
delightful memories for their years of manhood and woman- 
hood — memories which bind their hearts with a threefold 
cord not easily broken, to the scene of their earliest and 



368 OLD GREEK 

purest enjoyments. It is truly surprising how much of what 
is usually designated a love for home, may be resolved by a 
little reflection into love for trees. Recur to the pages of 
those who have written on this subject, and it will be found 
almost invariably, that this sentiment is described in con- 
nection with some aged and venerable tree — some sheaf- 
topped elm, perchance, stooping like a guardian angel, over 
the homestead ; or perchance, a generous apple or pear tree, 
with an equally generous grapevine hugging its trunk and 
surmounting its branches like a boa constrictor ; or some 
giant sugar maple which has been tapped so often in spring 
that it looks like a huge round cartridge box ; or some gnarled 
oak, beneath which the girls gathered acorns for their baby 
cups and saucers ; or some yellow-limbed willow near the 
brook, in whose ample boughs the boys built their cuddies, 
when they returned from school in the long days of summer. 

"^ ^ * I can express no kindlier wish for my dearest friend 
than that he may live to a green old age, at peace with man 
and his Maker, and pass it amid vines and peach trees, amid 
plum and pear trees, amid apple and cherry trees, with here 
and there a thrifty elm or maple, locust or ash, which his own 
hands have planted and watered, pruned and mulched, 
manured and defended in his and their early years, with none 
to dispute him by a note protested, or to make him afraid by 
a threatened lawsuit. 

April 19, 1848. 

Lawns 

The three things essential to a lawn, as I look at it, are 
space, grass, and decoration. The word " lawn " impHes, not 
barely soil for the grass to grow upon, but natural and artistic 
embellishments, with an open, unobstructed view of the sky 
and the surrounding landscape, in which the greenness of the 
turf is set as a living picture in a living frame. The Welsh 
word Uawn allied to land^ and in meaning akin to the French 
prairie and the Spanish savanna^ compels us to think of 
something different from a narrow bit of grass, cribbed. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 369 

cabined, and hedged about with iron or wooden pickets, or 
high stone walls, or board fences. There is no need that the 
size of a lawn be told in acres. 

The shaven grass may cover but a few feet of space, yet 
by the skillful management of a framework of evergreens, 
sloping upward and outward from the central carpet of ver- 
dure, with openings here and there to coax away the eye to 
some misty mountain top, or bended river, dropped 

Like a silver bow 
Upon the meadows low, 

it may cunningly appropriate to itself all the beauty of the 
landscape for a circuit of ten, twenty, or fifty miles. This 
was the case with Downing's lawn at Newburgh. Its flowing, 
leafy boundaries concealed ingeniously all neighboring imper- 
tinences, while they invited the eye to a variety of distant 
prospects, commanding the restless diorama of the storied 
Hudson, in whose crinkling mirror the bold mountain peaks 
watched their own shadows. 

In midwinter reveries I like to think of a single square 
rod of turf that my feet once pressed, in the noisy heart of 
New York, in the rear of a row of five-story, fireproof dwell- 
ings, a rod of turf so carefully shaved and rolled, and watered 
and cosseted by an old Scotch gardener, that it smiled like an 
excerpt from the nuptial bower of our first parents ere the 
blight fell on Eden. The grass itself was fresh and perfect. 
Though shut in on three sides by stifling brick walls, there 
was an opening on the fourth side, where, looking under a 
large, cool Catalpa, burdened with broad leaves and pendent 
seed pods, you had a clear view of New York bay, as it bore 
the vexation of straight-going ferryboats, and blustering 
steam tugs, and slow merchantmen. 

Over all hung the heated haze of an August noon, and above 
was a glimpse of the sweet blue sky, looking down like ox-eyed 
Juno. I call that a miniature lawn, achieved in the teeth of 
difficulties, and worthily so named, because it associates a 
piece of irreproachable grass with comely decoration, and 



370 OLD GREEK 

the charm of a distant prospect. I could tell of others in our 
own neighborhood, quite limited in extent, yet so adroitly- 
limited that they convey the impression of space and room- 
iness. By means of evergreen boundaries, they manage to 
take in all the pomp of distant woods, all the sheen of the 
Oriskany, all the plum bloom of the Adirondack hills. Wire 
has been used for making a fence that would turn cattle 
without spoiling the impression of roominess. A wire fence, 
painted green, and in good repair, is not to be complained of. 
We oftener see them unpainted and rusty; with the posts 
and rods broken or bent every which way, and offensive to 
the eye. The English ha-ha, or sunk fence, is an ingenious 
contrivance for giving invisible boundaries to a lawn. A 
deep, broad ditch takes the place of an ostentatious fence. 
Its name is a fine stroke of mother wit. You start out for a 
lazy stroll over what seems a far-reaching meadow. Before 
your cigar is well lighted, you are suddenly stopped by a ditch, 
and though you never saw it before, you call it by its right 
name " ha, ha, this is the way my friend cheats with his 
underground fences ! " 

Of course there can not be a lawn without grass. This is 
the groundwork and sine qua non^ without which space and 
decoration lose their significance as adjuncts to a lawn. By 
grass we mean not a frowzy, unkempt growth of miscella- 
neous herbage, but a smooth sod, thickly sown with white 
clover and redtop, or kindred perennials, and frequently 
rolled and mowed, till it daily invites the sun and clouds to 
illustrate one of Milton's memorable phrases, and " work 
mosaic on the emerald turf." 

There is scarcely anything in nature or art more beautiful 
and wonderful than the many-bladed grass which the summer 
night is never tired of stringing with liquid pearls. You 
may tread upon it without doing injury, yet its beauty is deli- 
cate, soft, and tender to the eye. The nature of the grass is 
companionable and cozy. It is like an everyday, easy- 
natured friend who never takes offense, is always at home 
to you, cares not a fig for ceremony, but keeps surprising 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 371 

you with outbursts of wit, or snatches of extempore song, or 
ambuscades of generosity. Excepting the conifers, the grass 
is the last green thing that waves us a cheerful good night, 
when nature goes to its wintry sleep. It is the first green 
thing that greets us in spring, when the snowdrifts melt. Lin- 
naeus, who was fond of tracing analogies between plants and 
men, called grasses the plebeians of the vegetable kingdom. 
They prove that there is no necessary antagonism between 
the useful and the beautiful. Each new mowing of the lawn 
is another sweet dinner for the stalled ox, or another layer 
for the haymow. The flowers in the pasture flaunt their gay 
colors, exhale their fragrance, and perish. But the grass of 
the lawn, after honoring a mission of beauty, yields to the 
scythe gracefully, dies an aromatic death, and magnifies a 
mission of utility. 

Whether it lies beneath the sight, laughing in a May shower, 
or flecked with a June snowstorm of apple blossoms, pink and 
white, or basking in a July noontide, or alive with shadows 
of clouds, on a gusty day, playing tag across it, or sleeping in 
the moonshine, the eyes of man and beast and bird, and even 
reptiles, rejoice in the changeful glory of the summer's 
"lush and lusty grass." Not only is the grass glorious, but 
a peculiar glory to our own latitude. We may call it an 
emblem of freedom, for it disdains to live where slavery's 
blight is the deepest. No one can guess, till he has tried the 
loss of it, how the eyes of an exiled Northerner ache for the 
sight of emerald turf. 

In a climate so variable and un-English as ours, grass can 
not be made to grow in durable freshness without a deep and 
mellow soil. A lawn should have power to resist the heaving 
frosts of winter, and the searing heats of August. Observa- 
tion shows that the taproots of clover will reach down four 
feet, when the mellow soil is deep enough to allow it. A 
lawn thus thoroughly subsoiled will hold its greenness through 
the trying reign of the dog star, when the sight of it is most 
refreshing. 

In starting a new lawn the best grass seeds are said to be 



372 OLD GREEK 

redtop and white clover. They should be mixed at the rate 
of one part of the white clover to three parts of the redtop, 
and sown very evenly and thickly, using four bushels for an 
acre. When the grass has started, the lawn should be rolled 
and mowed every ten or fourteen days. Every new use of 
the scythe thickens the soft, velvety pile of the lawn and 
adds to its finish, endurance, and power to please. Frequent 
rollings break down the ant-hills and worm heaps, and keep 
the smoothness like that of a carpet. Yellow dock, plantain, 
burdock, wild mustard, and daisies are a nuisance, not to be 
tolerated one moment. They defile the lawn and should 
be rooted up. There can be no objection to the blue-eye 
and wild violets. Lord Bacon recommends the planting of 
burnet, wild thyme, and watermint, " which perfume the air 
most delightfully when trodden upon and crushed." In the 
same essay he declares " there is nothing more pleasant to 
the eye than green grass finely shorn." 

There is a choice of methods for quickening and thicken- 
ing the verdure of a lawn. The too common practice of 
spreading it in autumn or spring with the filthiest crude ex- 
tract of barnyard is indecent and without apology. No true 
lady will be altogether uncomely even if caught in her morn- 
ing robe ; and a well-regulated lawn should not be repulsive 
when it takes on its annual supply of nutriment. No doubt 
the best way is to use liquid manure. This is straightway 
absorbed, and produces an immediate effect. If the prefer- 
ence is for solid manure, make a fine deodorized compost, 
and spread it on the grass in autumn or early spring. Super- 
phosphates can always be had for a consideration. But bet- 
ter than these is the domestic guano, which every henhouse 
is glad to be relieved of. 

A lawn can not be perfect without embellishment, especially 
the embellishment of trees. Only they should be like angel 
visits, few and far between. Too many trees spoil the 
lawn. The tendency with beginners in lawn making is 
to plant too profusely, and thus convert into a shrubbery, 
a wilderness, or a garden, what should be an open stretch 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 373 

of dressed ground, always waiting for the free range 
of the roller and the scythe. In recalling examples that 
satisfy one's ideal of a faultless lawn, the memory instinc- 
tively goes to New England, and selects one of its grassy 
slopes of unblemished verdure, with a single centuried elm 
stooping over it like a guardian divinity, one of Doctor 
Holmes's tree wives twenty feet in clear girth, to which he 
has wedded himself by putting about it that well-worn meas- 
uring tape. Or the memory goes to Schenectady, and hovers 
about that cool, bright amphitheater at Union College, with 
its green, turfy concave below, answering to the green, leafy 
concave above, with a spry Dutchwoman running to pick up 
each leaf or bit of paper that falls to mar the unique charm 
of the emerald landscape. Is it to be wondered at that Doctor 
Nott asks to be buried beneath that monumental elm, where 

his dust may 

Suffer a slow change 
Into something rich and strange ? 

Could his mortal clay, when the soul leaves it, ask for a nobler 
use than to climb that stalwart trunk, to invigorate those sway- 
ing arches, to run on errands of nutriment through those lithe 
drooping Hmbs, to greet the sunlight in that multitudinous 
foliage, in that vast Olympian canopy of greenness, still to live 
and still preside over a venerable home of science, while every 
leaf whispers to the passers-by 

Exegi monumentum aere perennius f 

Evergreens, sparingly planted, preferably those of pyramidal 
shape, with branches growing low and close to the ground, are 
appropriate for decorating a lawn. Its borders may be properly 
marked with evergreen hedges or trees, provided there are 
suitable openings for catching views of choice points in the 
neighboring landscape. Other decorations are often recom- 
mended, and to a limited extent are worthy of adoption. 

A sun dial all will allow to be a suitable and useful embeUish- 
ment. If its inscription conveys a good lesson, so much the 
better. The literature of sun dials is not as extensive and 



374 OLD GREEK 

rich as it ought to be. Whoso erects one will need to exercise 
ingenuity in devising a fit motto. Vases and urns are architec- 
tural in their character, and should be placed near the house, 
so as to form a connecting Hnk between it and the lawn. 
Marble dogs couchant, lions rampant, and fawns on the qui vive 
are sometimes placed on the lawn. These are better than nude 
statues of mythic divinities, because they are imitations of 
nature. But the comeliest decoration after all is a group of 
jolly schoolmates, playing " oats, peas, beans, and barley, O," 
with a live Newfoundland to trip them up, or a holiday knot 
of men and women, genially discussing some juicy problem of a 
philosophy 

Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools believe, 

But musical as is Apollo's lute. 

The lawn was made for man, not man for the lawn. It 
should be kept subservient to social uses, and made the theater 
for the interchange of kindly greetings and generous amenities. 
The old Greeks, with their soft cHmate and Itahan skies, knew 
how to create a lawn, how to embellish it, and how to use it, 
too. 

Such a lawn I would commend to-night : one thoroughly 
Platonized, so as to carry an expression of roominess and 
freedom (gained by the absence of close, high fences and 
thickly dotted trees) ; an expression of purity and neatness, as 
opposed to undipped hedges and weedy grasses running to 
seed ; a social, homelike expression apparent in arbors, rustic 
seats, and fountains and groups of trees, where the birds like 
to congregate and sing; an all-pervading aesthetic expression, 
especially visible in the vases, statues, parterre, and resting, like 
a grateful atmosphere, over the entire scene. 

Modern art is fond of breaking up the green monotony of a 
lawn by cutting out beds for flowers — beds of every shape, 
crescents, stars, circles, rhombs, and nondescript figures. Such 
embelHshments are pleasing and unobjectionable if placed in 
the vicinity of graveled walks. 

A lawn without water may seem to some like the play of 
Hamlet, with Hamlet left out. Yet I had well-nigh forgotten 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 375 

to speak of it. In the composition of a landscape few things 
produce more beauty, variety, and interest than water. Lakes, 
waterfalls, and fountains are great acquisitions to dressed 
grounds, provided always the water is abundant and unfailing. 
A muddy, stagnant pool, with a green scum on the surface, is 
offensive. The sight of water gives no pleasure unless it is free 
to run away when it pleases. When imprisoned in a water- 
lime frog pond, it occupies a false, unnatural position, and 
convicts the artist of an unpardonable infidelity to truthfulness. 

And how about the cost? Avaunt thee, wretched question! 

Why need you throw mortal stones at every brilHant, vitreous 
air castle that a poor day dreamer takes so much comfort in 
building? Of course a finished lawn must be paid for. The 
author of Vathek lavished a milHon or so on his. Men of 
circumscribed incomes can make shift to do with less. 

The Garden 

* * * In the sunniest periods ofa prosperous career, there will 
be moments of weariness, moments of sickness, if not moments 
of disgust at the vanity and hollowness of what the world calls 
success, for which we are solaced by coming home, like half- 
weaned children, to the green garden lap of mother earth. 
A home is never so complete as to fully satisfy the heart ; is 
never quite worthy to be called a home, unless it offers the com- 
fort and solace of a garden. So intense and clamorous is this 
hunger of the heart for a garden that we often see it humored 
in city windows with potted plants where their stretching and 
yearning for the sunshine are hke that longing, Hngering look 
with which our first parents bade farewell to Paradise. 

As every complete rural home must have its garden, so every 
complete farm must be epitomized in the garden. We call it a 
garden to express our idea of its sacredness, and its consecra- 
tion to home's dearest uses and comforts. In defiance of its 
derivation from the French jardin, the garden is thought of as 
a guarded spof; a place set apart for higher uses than its sur- 
rounding acres. The garden is a place where the poetry of 



376 OLD GREEK 

rural life finds fitting expression in the glory of flowers and 
ornamental shrubs, in choice fruits and vegetable luxuries. It 
is a spot where birthdays and death days are commemorated by 
the planting of rare trees, whose cool, creeping shadows shall 
dial off the long summer hours on the shaven turf. 

The garden is a place that Cowper must have loved. There 
he played bopeep with his pet hares. There he amused him- 
self with " the clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme." There it 
was right pleasant for him, as it is for all like him, 
Through the loopholes of retreat 
To see the stir of the great Babel 
And not feel the crowd ; 

To hear the roar she sends through all her gates, 
At a safe distance, where the dying sounds 
Fall a soft murmur on the uninjured ear. 

The garden is the choice playground for humanity at its best 
estate. It is there that we are very apt to go for recreation and 
a brief forgetfulness of daily toil. If not good-for-nothing idlers, 
we are all in bondage to work and to duty. 

Hard work is a monster that oppresses, a Protean monster 
with many ugly shapes. This Protean monster keeps us awake 
nights, spoils digestion, turns the hair gray prematurely, digs 
hollows in the cheeks, summer-fallows the forehead, and winter- 
kills the poetry of hfe. Hard work rides us and rules us Hke 
the old man of the sea. But now and then we slip away from 
his hateful clutches, and rush for the garden, as unyoked tired 
steers scamper oif to the cool spring and the clover. Once in 
the garden, we grow back to giddy boys and girls again. In 
the sweet companionship of flowers, we forget the little duns 
that annoy, the small scandals that irritate, the distant famines 
and battles that desolate. 

The fable of Antaeus is no longer a fable, when the deUcious 
smell of mother earth revives the vigor of youth, and gives new 
courage and strength for the battles of life. 
O joy to us in such retreat, 
Immantled in ambrosial dark, 

To drink the cooler air and mark 
The landscape winking through the heat. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 377 

# # # There are cool morning and evening hours, when 
nature baits her invitation to the garden with most alluring 
bribes. The sweetest of all roses are those that borrow their 
tinting from the lips of the gardeness as she bends to her 
skillful toileting of mother earth, in the flush of sunset, ply- 
ing the trowel to the music of happy robins and happy 
thoughts. 

Rosy is the west, 

Rosy is the south, 
Roses are her cheeks, 
And a rose her mouth. 

The garden is something better than a place for recrea- 
tion ; something more than a teacher of economy. It is also 
an attractive school for the study of natural history. The 
habits of plants, of insects and birds, pass beneath our closest 
scrutiny while we are at work or at play in the garden. 
Our recreations and experiments in the garden give us 
alluring object lessons in botany, chemistry, meteorology, 
and entomology. In spite of a wholesome horror of pedantry, 
all unconsciously, before we know it, we hear each other talk- 
ing profoundly about the mysterious habits of the hated cur- 
culio, that little restless rascal of a Moslem propagandist, 
who is so zealous to leave his crescent signature on our green- 
gages and golden drops. 

We learn to forgive the greed of the robins, and cheerfully 
concede to them a lawyer's share of our cherries ; we become 
doubly grateful for their morning and evening serenades, when 
we see how usefully busy they are in devouring noxious 
insects. 

* =^ * We need not doubt that the good influence of Downing 
and others like him will continue to vivify and inspire, until 
the garden no longer needs a zealous advocate of its eco- 
nomic and aesthetic uses ; until every schoolhouse in the land 
is embowered in leafy coolness, and graced with a live 
teacher, who can teach the science of vegetable physiology, 
as well as the art of planting and pruning, and layering and 
budding, and hybridizing and grafting ; until every college 



378 OLD GREEK 

has its endowed chair of botany, and its Jardin des Plantes^ 
richly stocked with the vegetable treasures of every longitude ; 
not till every village has its people's garden, for the holidays 
of the living, and its rural cemetery, where the loved and 
gone are laid to their last sleep, in the still twilight of wooded 
slopes ; not till each farmer and laborer can sit under his 
own Delaware and Concord, with no dread of the mildew ; 
under his own Bartlett and Seckel, with no dread of the poor 
blight ; not till there are cherries enough both for birds and 
bairns ; not till each landholder, along with his well-kept 
lawn and garden, has a heart to relish their beauty, and 
to hear the voice of God walking among the trees of the 
garden. 

October 6, 1897. 

A fit conclusion to the series of Doctor North's lec- 
tures which this volume presents is his paper *' Greek 
Gardening," often read to the college classes, in which 
his own intimate self stands revealed in the plea for the 
close communion of scholarship with nature. 

Greek Gardening 

The genuine scholar is one who likes to keep his thoughts 
busy not alone with words, but with what the words stand 
for. He likes to look for something beyond the dry husks 
and outward integuments of ancient learning. To the genu- 
ine scholar whatever pertains to the landscape scenery and 
the rural life of the Greeks appeals with a singular fasci- 
nation. So deeply is he interpenetrated with the spirit of 
Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Theocritus, so intimately 
is their life absorbed into his life, that he owns an attach- 
ment for the soil they trod, for the skies that bent above 
them, for the streams beside which they walked, weaving 
their thoughts and feelings into rhythm, for the trees and 
hedges beneath which they playfully chatted, or soberly de- 
bated, for the " earth and water " that were emblems of 
their sovereignty. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 379 

This interest is not a barren or puerile sentiment. It 
brings growth and ripeness to the intellect, as well as 
comfort to the heart. It is to this Hellenizing tendency 
that Ohver Wendell Holmes makes confession when he 
says : "I have written many verses, but the best poems 
I have produced are the trees on the hillside which over- 
looked the broad meadows, scalloped and rounded at their 
edges by loops of the sinuous Housatonic. Nature finds 
rhymes for them in the recurring measures of the seasons. 
Winter strips them of their ornaments and gives them, as 
it were, in prose translation, and summer reclothes them in 
all the splendid phrases of their leafy language. What are 
these maples and beeches and birches but odes and idyls 
and madrigals ? What are these pines and firs and spruces 
but holy hymns, too solemn for the many-hued raiment of 
their gay deciduous neighbors ? " 

Going back from Holmes to Hellas, it may be claimed that 
the rocks and rivers, the mountain peaks and trees of Greece, 
had a voice in shaping and coloring the character of its in- 
habitants. Especially is this true of her poets and artists, 
whose companionship with nature was more intimate, more 
unreserved, and more free from disturbance than that of her 
orators and historians. 

If one would arrive at the truest conception of the Hellenic 
character in its aesthetic phase, if one would teach the 
inner eye to detect all its delicate shadings of thoughtfulness, 
all its half-conscious revealings of sentiment and fancy, he 
must take into account the subtle influence of those natural 
agents. Not more truly to Wordsworth than to his prototype, 
Theocritus, were 

The tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep gloomy wood, 
Their colors and their forms 
An appetite, a feeling, and a love. 

Not more truly to Byron than to ^schylus was there 

A pleasure in the pathless woods, 
A rapture on the lonely shore. 



380 OLD GREEK 

Amid the perpetual flux and the noisy, fretful changes of 
human life, nature remains the same. Mother earth is never 
out of patience ; never forgets her promise of summer and 
winter, seedtime and harvest. One generation goes and an- 
other takes its place, but the earth abides unchanged and se- 
rene. It is pleasure to remember that in most respects the 
physical features of Greece remain to-day what they were 
twenty centuries ago, before the unspeakable Turk had 
desecrated her temples and monuments of art. 

Take the trees of Greece that were selected as most appro- 
priate for gardens, lawns, and public parks, study them as 
giving something of an insight into Greek character, and it 
will be seen that they were made to satisfy higher needs than 
those of the mere mechanic, or builder, or fruit grower. To 
the inner vision of a Greek (whether cultivated and tasteful, 
or ignorant and superstitious), a tree was something better 
than a bundle of vegetable organs that satisfied its only mis- 
sion when it had contributed to his physical support, enrich- 
ment, or pleasure. It had an ethical significance. It spoke 
a language as many-voiced and potent as that from living 
lips. 

Many of the Greek trees were distinguished for their 
beauty and utility. These were sacred to divinities. The 
strength of Zeus found its symbol in the oak ; Apollo's grace 
in the palm ; Athena's ministry in the fruitful olive. The 
tapering fir was consecrated to Pan. Other emblematic uses 
were numerous, appropriate, and eloquent. This was not 
all. The Greek trees discharged other ofiices, which, though 
less specific, and not recognized in set phrases, were none 
the less real, touching closely the inner life of the nation. 
They had tongues and preached daily homilies to those who 
sought the cool baptism of their shade. The squandered 
fragrance of their blossoms breathed suggestions of kindness 
and sympathy. Their swaying branches and murmuring 
leaves gave unerring lessons in graceful gesture and melody. 

Their autobiography, as rehearsed from day to day by 
their persistent presence, was a volume of pithy proverbs. 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 38 1 

They taught that the most stupendous resuhs are inclosed 
in the seed of each Hving principle, just as Dodona's forest 
sleeps in the acorn's cup. Starting from minute germs, 
making themselves tall and stalwart and fair by their own 
industrious vitality, by slowly adding fiber to fiber, by push- 
ing out branch above branch, and leaf beyond leaf, by getting 
something of gain from each shower and dewfall, from sun- 
shine and breeze, by wrestling with tempests sturdily, by 
striking deep their burrowing roots, and pushing them out 
on remote excursions after food, they taught the infinite 
worth of strong will and plodding patience, and profuse 
energy and fixed faith. 

Over all large earnest souls the trees of Attica, if not 
those of Sparta, stretched out fraternal arms, breathing 
blessings, and whispering " the still sad music of humanity." 

Of all the superstitions entertained by the Greeks no one 
suggests a tenderer feeling for mother earth than that which 
associated with each tree a wood nymph, or hamadryad, 
whose life began and was doomed to terminate with the life 
of the tree. 

One of the familiar decorations in the theater of Bacchus 
was the furrowed trunk of an aged oak with a venerable 
dryad emerging from its summit. 

Reference is made to these fabled dryads in a paragraph 
of Homer's " Hymn to Venus." 

" Along with these nymphs at their birth are born either 
beech trees or high-headed oaks on the generous earth, grace- 
ful of form and vigorous. They reach toward the sun on 
lofty mountains. They are called the groves of the immortals. 
Mortal men never assail them with the ax. But when the 
doom of death is at hand, the graceful foliage withers, the 
bark dries up, the branches fall off, and then the life of 
the dryad quits the life of the sun." 

An ingenious and graceful allegory has been suggested by 
this botanic fable. It is often met with in modern literature, 
yet belongs to our subject too closely to be omitted here. 

A Greek youth named Rhcecus, in rambling through an 



382 OLD GREEK 

old forest, when the wind was high, met with an aged hollow 
oak, just trembling to its fall. Yielding to a momentary- 
impulse, Rhoecus propped up the tottering oak and passed 
on his way. Soon after, hearing his name pronounced with 
a gentle voice, he turned about and saw a maidenly shape, of 
more than mortal beauty, smiling upon him through the green 
gloom of the forest. " Rhoecus," said the superhuman 
shape, " I am the dryad of yonder oak, my existence you 
have lengthened out by an act of unsolicited kindness. Tell 
me how I can repay you, for my own life is linked with the 
life of the oak." Rhoecus was one of the many who act from 
impulse. In the presence of such radiant, intoxicating beauty, 
his impulse was to ask that the nymph would become his 
mistress. She gave her own private interpretation to his 
wanton request and consented. She promised to send a 
honeybee to announce the hour of their first interview, and 
melted from his sight. With a light step, a wicked joy at his 
heart, and a lover's song on his lip, Rhoecus hurried from the 
woods to the city. He fell in with gay companions ; was 
invited to dinner and dice ; and soon forgot the dryad's love- 
liness in the excitements of wine and gaming. The dice were 
rattling fast, and bets were running high, when the dryad's 
messenger flew in at the open door, and hummed its errand 
in his ear. " Confound the bee ! " fretted Rhoecus. " Does 
it take my face for a clover bed ? " The humming grew 
louder, and the dicer grew more impatient, until with a 
sudden blow, the poor bee was cuffed aside. With wounded 
wings it made its way back, and told what had happened. 
Soon after came Rhoecus himself, flushed with drink, and 
eager for the promised interview with the hamadryad. He 
stood again by the aged oak. He strained his maudlin eyes 
to pierce the dimness of the woods. But the fair vision of 
the morning was nowhere to be seen. At last he heard a 
low, sad voice whispering from out the deepening twilight : 
" I am beside you, Rhoecus, but not as a companion. Your 
lustful eyes will never see me again. The ear that could 
hear more music in the rattling of gambler's dice than in 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 383 

the humming of my errand bee is in bondage to a soul too 
dull and sensual for the pure embrace of nature's beauty." 
The wind sighed off in the distance, and Rhoecus knew that 
he was alone, foul at heart, and accursed. 

The Greek art of ornamental planting, or of expressing 
the beautiful in gardening, divides itself historically into two 
periods. We may call them, for convenience, the Homeric 
and the Platonic periods. As individual character often 
takes a coloring from intimate contact or want of contact 
with trees, so national features may be detected in the treat- 
ment and culture of trees as ornaments of the garden and 
landscape. 

If one were sent out into the country on a confidential 
mission to look up a man utterly selfish, brutal, mercenary, 
and small-hearted, his first call would probably be made at 
some slovenly place where no trees were invited to grow. 

There are few things in which the triumphs of genius and 
art are more signal and limitless than in landscape garden- 
ing. Yet the artist gardener is dependent upon nature for 
well nigh every feature of rural beauty that he develops. He 
must work out his design, not like a painter with pencil and 
colors, not like a sculptor with chisel and marble, but through 
the vital forces of nature. Yet he often seems to originate 
where he only improves, recombines, or reproduces. He can 
select what is comely, and discard what is worthless ; he can 
chasten what is rude, enliven and emphasize what is tame ; 
he can harmonize as well by sympathy as by contrast. 

He can pleasure the eye with unexpected sights, combina- 
tions, and sounds. Herein lies the secret of his power. The 
visitor who walks through the grounds at Chatsworth or Kew, 
sees no single element of rural beauty that is not to be seen, 
in separate position, somewhere else. Yet here these fea- 
tures of landscape beauty are so crowded together, and so 
skillfully grouped, nature's deformities are transformed into 
such attractiveness, that one can scarcely believe he walks 
the same worn-out, humdrum, and ugly earth that was blasted 
with the primal curse. 



384 OLD GREEK 

Homer's ideal of a princely garden is given in his picture 
of the grounds about the garden of Alcinous : 

" Around the palace was a large garden hard by the gates, 
covering four acres. A fence was stretched about it on every 
side. Here tall sturdy trees had grown up, pears and pome- 
granates, apples, bright-fruited and luxuriant olives. Of 
these the fruitage decays not, fails not, neither in summer 
nor in winter, lasting the year round. Pear grows mellow 
after pear, apple after apple, grape cluster after grape cluster, 
and fig after fig. Here also a rich-fruited vineyard had been 
planted. On one side a level drying ground is warmed by 
the sun. Here while some grapes they are treading, others 
they are gathering. In front are green grapes, having just 
cast the blossom, while others are purpling into ripeness. 
Here also are neatly kept flower beds, beside the last row of 
trees, blossoming throughout the year. Finally there are tv\^o 
fountains. One is carried over the grounds for irrigation. 
The other flows into the palace, whence the neighbors supply 
themselves with water. Such are the glorious gifts of the 
gods to the home of Alcinous." 

The picture thus glowingly painted is one that might cause 
the schoolboy's mouth to water, and his heart to break the 
tenth commandment, if not his hands the eighth. It offers 
everything to the palate, but little to the soul. It is poorly 
fitted, with all its miraculous details, for stirring the heart's 
deep springs of sentiment and for 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

The beautiful is dwarfed and overshadowed by the utilities. 

Homer's trees in the garden of Alcinous are wonderful and 
desirable not because they furnish a pleasant home for birds of 
song and social katydids ; not for the grace and animation 
they give to scenery ; not for the cool creeping shadows that 
dial off the long summer hours on the elastic shaven turf ; but 
simply and solely for their endless supply of luscious fruits and 
creature comforts. This were a paradise too grossly sensual, 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 385 

save for the age of Homer, or the dupes of Mahomet. Albeit 
a wealthy and great-hearted monarch, Alcinous has but narrow 
ideas of gardenesque beauty. His wine press is as much out 
of place, where Homer puts it, like a rude impertinence, 
between the palace and the flower beds, as would be a cider 
mill in th.Qjardin des Plantes. 

Homer is resolved that his waterworks shall pay well for the 
room they take up. His two fountains suggest only ideas of 
convenience and household utility. They are little better than 
a pair of drinking troughs. One of them seems to do the 
duty of a town pump. It is nought to Alcinous that water 
likes to declare its independence by leaping heavenward and 
dancing in the sunlight, as David danced before the Lord. It 
is nought to Alcinous that water has a natural turn for music 
and will sing in chorus with birds and morning stars, if one but 
give it a pebbly rill to run in. 

Plato's idea of gardenesque beauty is hinted at in the open- 
ing of his " Phsedrus," where the scene of the dialogue is 
thus described by Socrates as he strolls with his friend along 
the Ilissus : 

" By Juno, a charming retreat ! There the platane spreads 
very widely its cooling boughs and is superbly tall. The twi- 
light beneath the low willows is deHghtful, and the place is 
filled with their pleasant fragrance. A cheerful fountain of 
cooHsh water flows beneath the platane, which seems to be 
sacred to certain nymphs, from the statues of virgins that 
adorn it. Notice what summerish and agreeable music is 
furnished by the choir of tettixes. But the sweetest sight 
of all is that of the grass so persuasively wooing the reclining 
head to its sloping velvet." 

We hear and read much and often about Platonic love, 
Platonic bodies, a Platonic year: would it be riding a sug- 
gestive epithet too freely, in memory of this rare model of 
aesthetic gardening, to speak of a Platonic lawn? 

Plato's ideal represents an advanced stage of culture and 
refinement. It represents a period when sense was subordi- 
nated to spirit ; and the glories of nature were wedded to the 



386 OLD GREEK 

creations of art, or brought into kindliest rivalry with them, 
and this without sacrificing to the alliance aught of nature's 
attractive simplicity. The Platonic garden was a place where 
temples were built to the naiads and oreads, with which Homer's 
religion peopled each stream and wooded hill ; where tempting 
walks coaxed the feet through weird perplexities of shadow and 
fragrance ; where glades opened through to waterfalls spanned 
by rainbows, as if to furnish a playground for unfettered fancies ; 
where drooping willows caressed the white silence of marble 
goddesses ; 

Where meeting boughs and implicated leaves 
Wove twilight o'er the poet's path. 

The Platonic garden was a place for social reciprocities. 
There friends came together, without ceremony, in the long 
summer evenings, and timed the music of their talk by the 
cicada ticking in the grass. It was a favorite place for intel- 
lectual encounters and jousts of wit. In place of a smooth 
earth floor, warmed by the sun, where slaves were treading 
grapes in the wine press, and water tanks, where drudging 
housemaids were filling their pitchers, it had green, broad 
lawns, shaded by platanes, pomegranates, and olives, with 
temples sacred to dance and song, and inviting seats sacred 
to conversation, where keen thinkers were solving the problems 
of a philosophy well-named divine, a philosophy 

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools believe, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute. 

Proportionately as men advance in civilization, their love for 
the beautiful in gardening grows deeper and stronger. With 
each step of progress in self-culture, there is a marked improve- 
ment in skill and taste for managing the details of an orna- 
mental landscape, and thus compelling nature to express their 
ideas of the beautiful. 

The passion for natural beauty sometimes attributed to the 
Indian and the wild trapper will hardly bear a close inspection. 
They will stop to admire that which stuns and amazes, Uke a 
but they are generally cold to that which insinuates 



GARDENER AND NATURE LOVER 387 

its lesson of loveliness in the whisper of leaves and the tinting 
of flowers. They are Hke Homer's Alcinous, seeing most 
attractiveness in what contributes to the joys of the table, 
or the lower conveniences of life. Their chief love is given 
to objects that gratify the animal appetite; while they are 
heedless of what ministers through the outward senses to the 
hunger of the heart. Whoever heard, unless it were in some 
fiction's baseless fabric, of an Indian planting a rosebush by 
the door of his tent, or of a trapper stretching an seolian harp 
in a crevice of his cabin ? 

It may be drawn as a practical sentiment from the facts and 
thoughts now presented, that a true and wholesome scholarship 
and culture will keep itself in close communion with nature, 
and will strive to advance in the knowledge of men and books, 
without becoming estranged from trees and landscapes. 

Whate'er of ancient song remains 
Has fresh air flowing in its veins. 
For Greece and eldest kin knew well, 
That out of doors, with world-wide swell, 
Arches the student's lawful cell. 

A monkish and morbid seclusion from sun and wind and dew- 
faU are not essential to profound learning. On the contrary, the 
mind, not less than the grass and the trees, is made glad and 
vigorous and fruitful by the sunshine. 

There are rich reserves of pleasure, sweet suggestions thrill- 
ing to the heart, and rare nutriments for mental growth, far 
away from libraries, out beneath the blue, broad arch, for lack 
of which mere bookworms pine and waste away and shrivel. 
A genuine disciple of Plato, whose time-honored Academy was 
a grove of olives (that are still living and still productive), will 
scorn to take his enjoyment of nature at second hand, through 
the medium of books and other men's experiences. He will 
keep himself intimate with the denizens of the forest, animal 
and vegetable, with the changes brought about by the ceaseless 
circuit of the seasons, and the fairy drama of the months. He 
will suffer himself to be beguiled from the fretful fevers of the 
world, from the dreary dumbness of printed pages, by the 



388 OLD GREEK 

beckoning woods, by the winking stars that constellate in the 
nightly sky, by the seductive voices that call to him from out a 
thousand shaded nooks and lonely footpaths, where 

Spring's green girlishness 
Moves mobile as it trembles into June. 

He will keep in fellowship with the slopes and brooks, the 
meadows and the cornfields, where the pulse of nature may be 
heard to beat, and where he can recognize 

In nature and the language of the sense 
The anchor of his purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of his heart. 

Such walks will bring to his notice delightful and profitable 
subjects for research and contemplation. In this way the souPs 
eye, sharpened by the power of harmony, will learn to see into 
the life of things about him. Whatever his mood, he will always 
find in nature something to make him a better man. Where 

The delicate forest flower, 
With scented breath and look so like a smile, 
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mold, 
An emanation of the indwelling Life, 
A visible token of the upholding Love, 
That are the soul of this great universe. 



CHAPTER XII 

MEMORIAL ADDRESS! 

By HERRICK JOHNSON, D.D., LL.D., '57 
McConnick Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois 

Something fine, unique, and matchless dropped out of the 
life of Hamilton College when Edward North dropped out of 
it. We are here at this memorial service to pay tribute to his 
memory. With what balances shall we weigh him, so that by 
comparison or contrast we may reach a just estimate of his 
worth ? 

Weighed over against mere material endowment, as stone 
and mortar, or dollars and cents, sixty years of such a gift of 
God to the college as Edward North was, makes the biggest 
endowment Hamilton ever had seem " a trifle light as air." 

Weighed over against vast executive force, as in the masterly 
handling of affairs, the scales of a just balance soon tell that 
mere power of administration is no match whatever for the 
God-trusting spirit that let loose such intellectual and moral 
forces here on the hill, and for more than half a century spent 
itself in the molding and mastery of men. 

Drummond said some while ago that " love is the greatest 
thing in the world." But what is love without a lover? How 
can an attribute of personality be greater than the personality ? 
With "Old Greek" in the scales " love" would be outweighed 
by " love " plus a rare, unique, mystic personality, in which 
love was born, and out from which love was ever going on 
errands of beneficence. 

1 Delivered before the faculty and students of Hamilton College, November 
17, 1903. 

389 



390 OLD GREEK 

It was this power of personality that made Hamilton's Greek 
chair famous for half a century. And this is both the inspira- 
tion and the theme for this memorial service. 

Power of personality may be somewhat difficult to define. 
But we all recognize it ; and when we come into the presence 
of it, we instinctively pay it homage. It was this in Mark 
Hopkins that Garfield glorified in his famous saying, " Presi- 
dent Hopkins and a log to sit on would be college enough for 
me." PersonaHty can not be copied — it must be developed. 
It can not be manufactured — it must be grown. It is a com- 
posite — not any one quality, but a combination of quaUties. 
There is both a perceptive and receptive element in personality. 
One needs to be open-eyed and open-minded, and must not 
only be able to see things, but be ready to take things in. 
Humboldt is reported as having said of a somewhat noted tourist 
that " he had traveled more and seen less, than any man he 
ever knew." This is the blunt way science has of teUing the 
matter. 

Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God, 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes, 
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. 

This is the poet's way of telling the matter. 

Alas, how many of us are before the bush, reading no sign 
of God there, content to go on plucking blackberries ! But 
this seer, whose memory we here honor, this man of visions, 
saw God in each burning bush, and off came his shoes ; for the 
place whereon he stood was holy ground. But not only must 
one see things and be ready to take them in, he must know 
them as they enter. Knowledge gives the intellectual element 
of personaUty. No personaUty worth speaking of is possible 
where there is mental vacuity. 

And one needs to feel things — which is the emotional ele- 
ment of personality. And to do things — which is the voli- 
tional element. And to put conscience into things — which 
is the ethical element. 




Edward North in tiIe 90's. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 39 1 

This is the composite vital to high personality, and the pro- 
portions in which these various elements get mixed will de- 
termine the charm, the glory, the power, and the victories of 
this mystic thing which is so real, and which nevertheless 
baffles dissection and eludes all analysis. 

It is just because of this possibility of power in personality 
that the living teacher can not be superseded. Books will not 
do the business. A living man before living men will for ever- 
more be mightier than white paper and black ink. Hence 
it is that speech is the great instrument of power with man. 
Hence the biblical statement, "Death and life are in the 
power of the tongue." 

Carlyle flamed out against this. He disparaged the tongue 
and lauded the press ; decried speech and glorified literature. 
His idea is, " Laws are not made by Parliament, but by the 
pen." The true university, he says, is a collection of books. 

But the world's great seats of learning go on establishing 
their lectureships and chairs of instruction, and they com- 
pass the earth for living personalities with which to fill them, 
Carlyle to the contrary notwithstanding. 

A library has some unquestionable elements of inspiration. 
But the mind of an author is more than his works. The 
genius of a writer is greater than his writings. The nameless 
and potent charm of intense personality can not all go down 
into a written word or a dead book. Soldiers worth anything 
will obey a written order of their chief, as it may be read along 
the lines ; but to see his face and hear his voice will lock their 
jaws with a firmer clench of duty and put into their fighting 
invincibleness ! Peter the Hermit by his flaming speech fired 
all Europe with crusadic ardor. Luther's words, with Luther 
behind them, were thunderbolts. It was Gladstone's speeches 
permeated with Gladstone, that made him, for so long, primate 
of all England, and a world power. 

Truth is mighty. But truth in personality is well-nigh al- 
mighty. 

How shall I set before you the rare personality that made 
such impress on the student Hfe of Hamilton for sixty years, 



392 OLD GREEK 

and left the track of its operation so ineffaceably and benefi- 
cently on upward of two thousand of her alumni? 

Shall I do it by the briefest of biographies ? Edward North 
was born in Berlin, Connecticut, March 9, 1820. He died at 
his house on College Hill, September 13, 1903. There it is — 
two dates and a life between. But of that life this brief record 
tells us absolutely nothing save that it was just so long. And 
this does not touch the hem of the garment of personality. 

Let us then multiply the data. 

He united with the church in 1831, when he was eleven 
years old. He began his preparation for college in his native 
town and finished it at the grammar school in Clinton, in 
1837. He was graduated at Hamilton with the rank of valedic- 
torian in 1 84 1. In 1843, when he was less than twenty- four years 
of age, and only two years out of college, he was elected Dexter 
professor of Greek and Latin in Hamilton College. In 1862 his 
chair was divided and he was elected Professor of the Greek 
Language and Literature, which chair he held for the balance 
of his Hfe. In 1844 he received the degree of A.M. from Brown 
University. In 1869 the honorary degree of Doctor of Liter- 
ature was conferred upon him by the University of the State 
of New York, and in 1887 the degree of Doctor of Laws was 
given him by Madison (now Colgate) University. Since 1852, 
Professor North was one of the trustees of the Clinton Gram- 
mar School; since 1855, a trustee of the Clinton Cemetery 
Association and Necrologist of the Society of Hamilton Alumni. 
He had charge of the department of Alumniana in the " Ham- 
ilton Literary Magazine" from its foundation in 1866. In 
1865 he was president of the New York State Teachers' Asso- 
ciation. He was a member of the New York Historical Soci- 
ety, the Albany Institute, the Oneida Historical Society, the 
American Philological Association, the American Philosophical 
Society, the Hellenic Philological Sullogos of Constantinople, 
and other similar associations. He was known as the author 
of contributions to different reviews and magazines, and of 
published addresses before various societies, thus giving him an 
established reputation as an accomplished essayist and critic. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 393 

But with all this, and more that might be named, we are 
not let into the secret of this quiet but mighty life. These are 
mere biographical data, honorable indeed, and betokening pub- 
lic confidence, varied activities, and trusts well discharged. 
But his mystic personaHty is not in these. They do not tell us 
one word of the weird witchery and strange spell by which he 
captured and charmed both the scholarly and the dull, proving 
a creative and uplifting force that lured or inspired to higher 
things almost every student ever under his care. We must go 
deeper than dates and degrees, deeper than the calendar and 
the catalogue, to find the real man. 

We shall find something of Edward North's unique pow^r 
of personality in his style of expression. 

Buffon goes so far as to say " the style is the man." Cer- 
tainly language is more than the dress of thought. It is the 
living and organic body of which thought is the possessing and 
vivifying spirit. Just as no eye flashes and no face glows, so 
no words burn where there is no fire within. In this sense 
North's style was North's soul. The rare quaintness of the 
spirit got expression in rich and sparkling quaintness of speech. 
The poetic soul found poetic utterance. This imparted the 
flavor of the original to his translations, and gave him the ex- 
quisite poetical and musical English in which he so deftly and 
smoothly rendered the musical Greek. This furnished him the 
happy choice and collocation, and sometimes coinage, of words 
that lent most felicitous expression to his thought. 

Two years ago hundreds of his old students joined in send- 
ing him a bushel of letters as a Christmas greeting. It has 
since been my privilege to look over some of these letters of 
love and congratulation. And this is the way they speak of 
his style : One of the boys calls him " the most consummate 
master of the English language." Another embodies his 
thought of him in a quotation from the Iliad : 

Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skilled ; 
Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled. 

Another speaks of " the beautiful rhythmical flow of those won- 
derful lectures we delighted so much to hear." 



394 OLD GREEK 

Here is his own happy, prophetic, and poetic characteriz- 
ing of commencement week as he stood fifty years ago, and 
prophesied what it would be a century thence : " Commence- 
ment week," he said, " will be a sumptuous carnival of scholars, 
rivahng the brilliant Panathensea of the Greeks, at which wit, 
beauty, science, eloquence, and song shall jewel the feet of the 
Hours as they trip smiHngly by." 

And here is his apt and epigrammatic way of contrasting two 
friends, to each of whom has been sent a basket of flowers. 
The one he describes born " with the poet's vision and faculty 
divine "; the other "with the gifts of a lexicographer." The 
one deals with flowers tenderly, and " inhales their sweetness 
with sobs of delight." The other spreads them out as if on a 
dissecting table for scientific study ; or " proceeds to inspect 
them as a provost marshal might inspect a squad of raw re- 
cruits." " Both are passionately fond of flowers. Both are 
heartily grateful for the kindness that brings them. Yet they 
are decidedly unlike each other — almost as unlike as a black- 
bird and a blackboard or a bobolink and a bobsled." This 
happy knack of nicking things — this quaint originality of style 
— surely lets us see something of the quaint original. 

His mystic power of personality also shows itself in his youth- 
fulness of spirit. He kept it to the last. Age did not stiffen 
his soul or fix him in changeless ruts of procedure. He was 
as genial, willowy, and responsive to approach at eighty as at 
forty. He early became a child of God, and through all his 
subsequent manly and mature years he took God by the hand 
as a httle child, and trustfully walked with him all the way home. 
This childlike spirit that he carried up into old age accounts, 
in a large part at least, for the many classes of lovers he had. 
Not only the alumni loved him, not only the boys in the 
college, but every one who served the household, loved him. 
Even the women who came occasionally to clean and wash 
treasure the cute little speeches he made to them on occasions, 
showing appreciation of their work and lightening their toil. 
The people he met at summer resorts got tied to him — even 
children and the babies. The babies would always go to him 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 395 

and he would walk with them up and down the long hall of 
" Halfwayup," as if he were brooding over them in a kind of 
loving paternity. 

Here is what some of the Hamilton boys said of him in 
that rare budget of letters they sent him two Christmases 
ago. 

One of the boys of '85 writes, " I know the eternal youth 
of your heart." And one of the class of '6S says, " I remem- 
ber how you played with my firstborn child, long since gone 
to her eternal home." There he is, how easily we can picture 
him, on a chance visit in a Hamilton graduate's home, at his 
old tricks, playing the boy again in the dear caress and ten- 
derness of a spirit that could never grow old. A '75 enthu- 
siast puts it this way : 

Old with wisdom in your youth ; 
Young with lovers in your age ; 
Always old and always young ; 
"Old Greek" to all since '41. 

And a member of the class of '71 pays touching tribute to 
this same sweet grace in these words, " You showed me that 
an accomplished scholar may be as simple, trusting, and ap- 
proachable as a child." 

Approachableness ! Childlikeness ! Carrying this up into 
manhood and on to old age has been defined as genius. It 
marks certain great natures — preeminently, the Man of 
Nazareth ; never hedged about with dignities ; never behind 
locked doors; never in private quarters, with "no admit- 
tance " glaring at you over the entrance way. Greatly Hke 
him, reverently be it said, was the beloved Abraham Lincoln. 
It was this that so endeared the martyred hero to the popular 
heart. And Edward North's personahty had one of its sweetest 
phases in this, the approachableness it invited and furnished. 

Closely allied to this trait was another — his rare gentle- 
ness. It made him great. It made others great who came 
under the spell of it. Morley, in his just-published life of 
Gladstone, quotes an English sage as saying, " He is a won- 



396 OLD GREEK 

derful man that can thread a needle when he is at cudgels in 
a crowd ; and yet this is as easy as to find truth in the hurry 
of disputation." Even Gladstone was not always ready to 
admit this. But it had no difficulty of acceptance with our 
quiet and studious lover of books and men. He got no truth 
by warring words. Disputation was alien to him. Taking 
up the cudgels of controversy was never a joy. No one had 
more tenacious hold of principle. He would die for it. But 
a fight he abhorred. He fled the arena of hot discussion 
and acrid debate. And yet, while he never domineered men, 
he dominated them. He won his throne ; he did not force it. 
Nay, he never seemed to make any effort even to win affec- 
tion. He simply was himself, and the throne came to him. 

He was an iconoclast, but not of the rude, fierce sort, that 
smash our idols to our faces. We all remember the college 
days, when the college spirit and the college ambitions and 
rivalries and predilections led to the setting up of idols. The 
sophomores were quite prone to personify the class and to 
glorify the personification. A junior here and there would 
build an altar to logic. In my own day several of us (and I 
was among them) set up the idol metaphysics and paid it a 
good deal of homage. We muddled our brains with it, and set 
our tongues going, the result being what Spurgeon characterizes 
as *' unbounded nothing in big words." Then along would 
come the dear old tender iconoclast, the Greek professor, 
and like Emerson as described by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
he would " take our idols down from their pedestals so gently 
that it seemed like an act of worship." But they came down ; 
and they were never set up again. 

Here is the way some of his old students wrote of his gen- 
tleness as they crowned him on that Christmas coronation day 
a little while before he went home to God, to be crowned by 
the King of Klings : " One of the sweet inspirations of my 
life," says a member of the class of '86, " is the memory of a 
gentle, gracious, grand old man, whose kindly word at an op- 
portune time cooperated with other influences in leading me 
into the blessed ministry of Jesus Christ." 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 397 

"Your gentleness," writes another, of the class of '75, 
" your gentleness and kindliness, and evident faith that there 
was something good in me, kept me from going straight to 
the devil. If I knew where upon this earth I could find a 
like influence for my boy, I should feel that he would be 
safe." What a crown to go to heaven with ! Imagine the 
dear " Old Greek " going up to his Lord with that tribute 
shining in letters of hght from his brow. We all know he 
would be ignorant of the shining, and would rather be saying, 
" Not worthy, Lord, to gather up the crumbs that from thy 
table fall." 

Another characteristic of this rare personality was a capacity 
for details. It is almost never associated with a poetic tem- 
perament. But this strange marriage took place in Edward 
North's nature, and the nuptials had God's own seal. He 
could sing and soar; but he could go on foot. He could 
sweep the heavens, yet harness his will to the minutest tasks. He 
was both telescopic and microscopic. Witness his Alumniana. 
Many of the old graduates found in these personal details their 
chief joy as they turned the pages of the " Hamilton Literary 
Magazine." How this dear alumni lover kept on the track 
of the boys ! Nothing seemed to escape his sight and search. 
He knew them as no other man on the hill knew them. He 
could talk about them as no other man on the hill could 
talk about them. When he met them he surprised them with 
his memory of details. And when they died, who could sum 
up the life record as he, making him the incomparable necrol- 
ogist, who has kept the annals of Hamilton's stelligerent host 
for well-nigh half a century. 

The old English poet, John Donne (perhaps as striking an 
original as our Edward North), once likened a married 
couple to a pair of compasses, or dividers, after this unique 
fashion : 

The one doth in the center sit, 
And when the other far doth roam, 

It leans and hearkens after it, 
And grows erect as it comes home. 



398 OLD GREEK 

By a slight change or two in this quaint quatrain we have a 
happy picture of our beloved professor, and the way he used 
to keep in touch with the graduates of Hamilton : 

" Old Greek " did in the center sit, 

And when his boys afar would roam, 
He leaned and hearkened after them, 
And grew erect as they came home. 

Is it any wonder that he knew the little details and incidents 
and happenings of so many of us, and that he had them handy 
when he met us by the way ! 

But it was not simply in his handling of the goings and 
doings of the alumni that he manifested his capacity for, and 
mastery of, details ; the minutest of the college interests were 
in his mind and often on his heart. And other interests of 
every sort had his thought and care. I have been permitted 
to look into the record of a year of his hfe — a brief diary kept 
by his own hand. It is tracked with just those multipHed 
minutiae of practical affairs that one would not have dreamed 
of, in this man of visions and this dreamer of dreams. 

Here is one day's record, copied at random from this com- 
monplace yet bewitching Httle book : " Greek at 9. Faculty 
meeting at 10. Greek with juniors at 11. In the cemetery 
with Mr. Hastings and Professor Root at 12. Rev. James 
Dean and Doctor Beckwith at i. Doctor Goertner at 2. In 
consultation with Doctor Brown at 3. Another appointment 
at 6. To Utica at 6.30. In * Herald' office until 9.30. 
Home at 10.30. But * no tired Nature's sweet restorer,' not 
a wink." That day's record, to the last droll word, is but a 
sample of the minuteness and variety and endless detail of his 
daily toil, and a sample also of how he could pull himself out of 
a state of utter weariness into a bit of characteristic pleasantry. 
We who knew how frail he was and how soon he tired, will not 
wonder, but will be touched to tears, at the silent confession 
wrung from him for his mute diary, but known only to him- 
self and to God. Here are a few of these reveahng records : 
" O the work that makes me another Sisyphus. The dogs of 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 399 

hurry and worry give me no rest, day nor night." "Hard 
day's work after sleepless night. Wrote no end of letters for 
students who want places for the summer." And again : " No 
good sleep last night to mend *the raveled sleeve of care ' ; " 
" Day unto day bringeth weariness, and night unto night asketh, 
' How long, Lord? ' " Yet out from such weariness and sleep- 
lessness he would come into open day with God and men as 
blithe and songful as a bird, with never a murmur on his lips 
or in his heart. In the inner circle that loved him most, " he 
would allow himself some periods of quietness and silence ; but 
of impatience, or fault-finding, or any unloveliness, there is not 
one memory ! " And this I have from the inner circle's very 
lips. 

And now I must not forbear a brief word as to the delicious 
humor that blended with other things in the make-up of this 
unique personality. 

It was not of the violent sort. It did not burst upon you 
as if all the flood gates had been opened. It was moist, but 
genial and gentle, the play of fancy, the imagination in sport 
— delighting in the incongruous — and yielding a facetious, 
though subdued and almost ethereal turn of thought. Indeed, 
nothing with him was with a roar. Even his laughter made no 
noise. It was quiet, but intense. It began in the merry 
twinkle of his eye, or in the smile that went chasing its way 
back to the ears, until the incongruous thing that caused it 
got such hold of him, that it fairly doubled him up, and shook 
him through and through. This was when the shaft of wit or 
splash of humor came from others. When it was his own, the 
effect only betrayed itself in the twinkle of his eye, or in that 
inexpressible, that inimitable smile with which he stood and 
looked you in the face. His humor stole in on you in such a 
quiet way that you were scarcely aware how rich it was, until 
the moisture oozed and oozed from every pore of the droll, 
quaint speech. 

In the earlier days of Wellesley College, when it was a part 
of the duty of the students to do the housework, one of the 
girls was reprimanded for her carelessness in faihng to dust 



400 OLD GREEK 

the back legs of a table. Her sister, then at " Halfwayup," 
told Professor North about it. It so amused him that he 
straightway sat down and wrote this note : " * Halfwayup,' 

November 4, 1879. My dear . When Phidias was asked 

why the figures on his pedimental sculptures were so care- 
fully finished, even in parts wholly removed from the sight of 
visitors, he made that memorable reply, * The gods see every- 
where.' Have they a stray goddess at Wellesley, who is equally 
hind-sighted ? " 

When our class came to Greek recitation one day, we found 
upon the blackboard, and drawn by our class artist, Tinker, 
a remarkably striking and suggestive likeness of his never-to- 
be-forgotten face, done of course more or less in caricature. 
We waited breathlessly to see what would follow the chair's 
recognition of the facsimile. He took his seat, looked at it 
over his spectacles, and said in his inimitable way, to the 
nearest student, "Will you please rub that out? One's 
enough ! " And down came the class with a roar that shook 
the ceiling. Ah ! well, one would have been enough, if we 
could always have kept it — the dear old, quaint original, the 
picturesque, classical, and homely, yet forever beautiful face, 
that beamed with kindliness and grew dearer and dearer to 
every student on the hill who had the high privilege of looking 
into it any while. 

One more specimen of his humor must suffice. It is fiir- 
nished by Hubbard, of the class of '50. The last of November, 
1848, it was announced in class that a stranger had arrived at 
" Halfwayup," in an alarming state of destitution. He was at 
once elected to class membership ; and an outfit of clothing, 
a copy of " Agamemnon," and a baby jumper were sent by the 
class to greet the new arrival. " Old Greek " found no class 
that morning, but went home with his bundle. The next 
morning at the class recitation. Professor North said, "I 
have been made the bearer of a communication to the junior 
class, which I leave upon the desk." The business committee 
faced the class, opened the letter, and prepared to read. He 
turned pale, and exclaimed, "Bring the dictionary." Simon 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 4OI 

Newton Dexter North, the son of his father, and not then a 
week old, wrote Greek on that first day of December, 1848. 
The little tot expressed his thanks for the honor of an election 
to the class, but deeply regretted that the class so soon in his 
career should deem him worthy of — suspension ! Years later, 
when the young prodigy in Greek had failed to take the coveted 
Greek prize, the father excused it to the committee by saying, 
" Greek was forced upon him too early ! " 

But I must not fail to mention at least one other character- 
istic through which Edward North's unique power of person- 
ality found expression — his contagious enthusiasm. He 
was an enthusiast, by the very law of his being and the very 
structure of his mind. He was buoyant, expectant, hopeful, 
and these are the boughs upon which enthusiasm grows. He 
had his moods of silence and sadness; the chariot wheels 
dragged heavily some days. There lurked somewhere in his 
nature a latent element of sternness. He had in him some 
of the stuff of which Puritans were made. But prevailingly, 
his mind was on the splendid possibilities of to-morrow rather 
than on the tasks of yesterday. He knew it was " greatly wise 
to talk with our past hours " ; but he made the talk a spur or 
a wing ; not a weight or an anchor. He cherished lofty ideals, 
and they led to lofty enthusiasms. He had a profound sense 
of the dignity and worth of things to which he put his hand, 
and they were so transformed under his magic touch, that the 
dumb idols — remaining dumb and answering nothing in other 
hands — were living oracles in his, and poured forth a doctrine, 
or a service, or a song, as sweet and beautiful as the dawn, 
" walking o'er the dew of a high eastern hill." 

Doubtless his chief enthusiasm was Greek. He was liter- 
ally ivOeos, possessed by the god, as to the Greek language and 
literature. He himself said at the close of one of his lectures 
on the old Greek lexicon, that he "had lived so long on 
Greek, it would never be melted out of him or frozen out of 
him." No one who had not thumbed the old Greek lexicon 
over and over and through and through with the hand of his 
heart, could have fallen so dead in love with it. Hear this 



402 OLD GREEK 

ardent lover tell of his passion in this high eulogy : " In com- 
ing years, when toil and disappointment and sorrow have fur- 
rowed the brow and pushed the golden bowl to the edge of 
its breaking, the old Greek lexicon will have its story to tell, 
when there is comfort in the telling, of youth's eager aspira- 
tions, sobered now by rough reality, of study's genial nurture 
and discipline, still adding something of sweetness and some- 
thing of beauty to the surroundings of life's monotonous 
drudgery. It will tell of castles in the Spain of a college day- 
dream, whose brilliant ruins have been framed into the solid 
structures of a workful, useful life. It will help to keep green 
the memory of unenvious rivalries that brought the rewards 
of finish and enterprise to scholarship, of grace and nutriment 
to thinking. It will help to perpetuate the rare blessing that 
lives in those hearty, breezy, unmercenary companionships of 
student days, with their tender backward glances and their 
eager onward reachings, that search the soul as with June's 
quickening sunshine, for its hidden seeds of heroism, to bid 
them blossom into generous deeds." 

And the enthusiasm that glowed and burned within him, 
that made out of an old Greek lexicon a memory, a poem, an 
heirloom, an inspiration, and a castle builder — this same en- 
thusiasm he kindled in his students. He did not make them 
all linguistic experts, oleaginous renderers of Homer's verse, 
and consummate masters of the classic tongue ! No. Neither 
old Greek, nor young Greek, nor ancient Greek, nor modern 
Greek, nor even Greek god, could do that. But he did show 
to every man of them a beauty, a flavor, a richness, a glory in 
the old Greek poetry and tragedy and song they had never 
dreamed of; and in many of his students he lighted the very 
fires that burned in his own soul. 

One of the class of ^62, sent this message in that mass of 
Christmas greetings the old students dumped into his lap at 
" Halfwayup " two years ago, " The glimpses you gave of 
the crowning glory of Greek architecture awakened in me a 
love for Greek literature, history, and art, that has been a pleas- 
ure and a help all through life." 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 403 

And Hoyt of 75 blossomed into song on that same Christmas 
day, as he said to his old teacher : 

Thou madest Greece a fair enchanted land, 
By simple virtue of thy scholar's wand. 

This poet student and his poet teacher have since joined 
in the hallelujahs of heaven j and if our ears were strung to 
heavenly music, we might catch the notes of " the new song " 
they are singing. 

Another distinguished son of Hamilton, known to two con- 
tinents, testified in his Christmas greeting that not only his 
enthusiasm for language and literature, but for a s)niimetrical 
and Christian hfe, were largely due to this beloved and schol- 
arly teacher of Greek. 

And another said, " It was Professor North who retouched 
my ideals, taught me a new philosophy of the life of service, 
and cast a spell of stimulating and abiding influence over my 
life." 

Yet how unconscious this Great Heart seemed to be that 
those fires were lighted at his own altars. Listen to this un- 
affected childhke word I copy from the little diary, many 
a page of \^hich is a window revealing the simplicity and 
modesty of this cultured Christian scholar : " Lectured to fresh- 
men on the influence of Homer. Wonderful is the enthusi- 
asm of a new class." Wonderful it may have been to him. 
But wonderful to nobody else. With North as the lecturer 
and Homer as his theme, enthusiasm was as sure of birth as 
day is when the sun comes forth out of his chamber. Think 
of the glow and fervor of feehng that began with that first 
lecture to the freshmen, and grew and grew with both teacher 
and taught, until the last lecture to the juniors, "The Old 
Greek Lexicon," and you will realize what a world of pathos 
and tears this tenderly reminiscent and sympathetic soul 
crowded into these closing words of his last lecture to the 
class, " If it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back, 
it is the last lecture that breaks the teacher's heart." 

But he had other enthusiasms than Greek. The college — 



404 OLD GREEK 

how he baptized it with his prayers and tears, how full he was 
with devices for its welfare, how jealous he was of its fair 
fame, how willing he was to spend and be spent in its behalf, 
though the more abundantly he loved it, the less he might be 
loved. I beheve he could say to the innermost and to the 
uttermost : Sooner than forget thee, O Hamilton, my hand 
shall forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of 
my mouth. 

Gardening was another of his enthusiasms. Nature to him 
had a heart. And he leaned tenderly to the soil, as if he would 
hear its great, silent throbbing. When he first took the side 
of the hill for his home, it was rough enough. He named it 
" Halfwayup." He put poetry into it. He flung his own sun- 
shine all over it. He caressed it into pliant and gentle moods. 
He knew every flower and shrub and tree on the place, for his 
hand had planted every one of them. In tearing up a plant, 
one would think he felt he might hear a human protest from 
beneath, he did it so gently. 

Such, in part, was the composite of this rare, unique per- 
sonality which yet defies classification and flies analysis. You 
can't find a perfume in a botany book. Cataloguing virtues 
is not producing a man. But these enumerated characteristics 
may serve to help us see the nature, " whose gracious in- 
fluence," says one of the class of '74, "more than any other 
single force, leavened the student body." "And who," says a 
graduate of '72, "impressed me so profoundly that every 
Hamilton graduate owed the world some unselfish work, for the 
betterment and uplifting of humanity." 

Thus we have seen how his personality found a voice. His 
verbal style marked a unique individuality. Even the splash- 
ing stroke of his pen was unlike any other that ever put a 
thought in words. We could tell it a rod away. His youth- 
fulness of spirit also gave his personality a voice. And so did 
his rare gentleness and his capacity for details, and his delicious 
humor, and his contagious enthusiasm. That he was rich and 
varied in his linguistic attainments and a consummate master 
of Greek, we all know. That he knew good company and 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 405 

how to keep it, his daily "walk with God" was a daily 
witness. 

He had the genius to be loved, the genius to be trusted, 
the genius to be Hstened to — the blessed triad that must 
keep company in any life, to make it winsome, beautiful, com- 
manding, and Christhke. The basal thing in the genius to be 
loved is the heart element. The basal thing in the genius to 
be trusted is character. The basal thing in the genius to be 
listened to is brain. Each is a distinct advance upon the other, 
and a distinct addition to it. The heart element is at the core 
of things. Lovableness begets love. But there is something 
more than this in the genius to be trusted. The mother pas- 
sionately loves her infant child. But the child must show 
character before the mother can put trust in the child. And 
it must grow both character and brain before it can win in- 
tellectual homage and command and keep admiration. The 
brain need not be of the Cyclopean or of the myriad-minded 
order, with trip-hammer logic and unlimited power and sweep 
of thought. But it must be brain. The brainless surface- 
seer, whose voluble loquacity is never embarrassed by intel- 
lectual activity, and who has a vast capacity of saying nothing 
at great length, will not long get ears to listen to his talk. 

The beloved North got them and kept them. The genius 
to be loved and the genius to be trusted and the genius to be 
listened to, found their basal elements in his personality. 
And they so interpenetrated each other, so played into each 
other, and were so harmoniously blended, that he everywhere 
won both love and admiration. 

Some men command and get our heads, and harness us to 
endeavor by the mighty sway of their wills. But we never feel 
that we would like to pillow our heads on their bosoms. 

Some men command and get our hearts. But they never 
lift their heads like mountain peaks before our wide-open, 
wondering, and admiring eyes. 

Let a cultured classical scholar, an honored son of Hamil- 
ton, an authority in biblical criticism, and who knows Hebrew 
as our Edward North knew Greek, tell us how he looks at this 



406 OLD GREEK 

matter. Here is the tribute he placed on the brow of the dear 
old octogenarian professor, a little while before he dropped 
Greek for the language of heaven. It voices the feeling of a 
thousand alumni hearts : " Some men I admire whom I do not 
greatly love. Others I love, but do not greatly admire. But 
during the forty-seven years since I first had the good fortune 
to have you as my teacher, you have commanded in a high 
degree both my love and my admiration." 

What a lovable original he was ! And what an original 
lovable ! Twice already we have found him answering to 
accredited definitions of genius — "Genius is carrying the 
spirit of childhood up into manhood and old age." Edward 
North answered to that. " Genius is capacity for and mastery 
of details." Edward North answered to that, too. 

Now let us turn to another definition. Emerson tells us 
that a genius is " a man whom God has sent into this world 
marked ' not transferable,' and ' good for this trip only.' " 

The old sage of Concord may have been looking in a mir- 
ror when he wrote that. Or he may have been thinking of 
" Old Greek ! " At all events, how it fits ! The alumni as 
one man say " We shall never see his like again." It was 
written all over him, "Not transferable," and "Good for this 
trip only." 

The boys come in and the men go forth, 
But there never will be but one Edward North — 
Old Greek ! 

But though we shall never see his hke again, we shall see him 
again, if we keep true, as he kept true, to truth, to conscience, 
and to Christ. 

Early of a Sabbath morning, last September the thirteenth, 
the singing soul slipped the shell in which he had so long 
made music, and the shell was empty. No song sung through 
the vacant chambers. The singing soul had gone home to 
God. We call that day his dying day — the day of his death. 
But did he see death? Yes, but death transformed. No 
longer a skeleton with a flying dart, but an angel with a 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 407 

golden key. I know not how he went home — up what shin- 
ing way, or with what attending convoy of ministering spirits. 
But ever since I stood on the summit of Righi in Switzerland, 
amidst the splendors of an autumn sunset, and saw God fling 
a bridge of golden sheen from the horizon across intervening 
spaces and abysses to my very feet, I have loved to think, and 
there is nothing in Scripture to forbid the thinking, He might 
thus cast up a shining way of grace and glory for all His ran- 
somed children as He called them one by one to come up into 
His presence chamber. And if He ever did it for any one, I 
think He did it for " Old Greek." 

I love also to think, and there is nothing in Scripture to 
forbid the thinking, that ministering spirits came out of heaven 
and down the shining way to meet the aged saint, already feel- 
ing the thrill and vigor of immortal youth as he neared the 
celestial city, and that in loving convoy they saw him through 
the gates. What if God let the Hamilton boys that had 
already died in the Lord do that for "Old Greek " ! Wouldn't 
it have been just like God ! And wouldn't the boys up there 
have been proud and glad ! 

Three days after that ascension day was the day of his 
burial — September the sixteenth. Sadly, tenderly, lovingly, 
we took up the body and laid it away in the college cemetery 
to await with other precious dust of other beloved servants of 
God the resurrection morning. Concerning this burial day 
we need only assure our hearts that in burying the body of 
our beloved North, he was not buried. No long unconscious 
sleep holds him in the tomb. When the emptied shell lay 
there that Sabbath morning, he was already " absent from 
the body " and " at home with the Lord." But when the 
time shall come for the resurrection trump to sound, he shall 
have his body back again, changed by some mysterious alchemy, 
from the old body of weakness and decrepitude to a body of 
glory and immortal youth. 

We have now come to another day — his coronation day ! 
Here we speak our loving memorial in honor of his worth 
and work. Here we lift an invisible monolith, and carve upon it 



408 OLD GREEK 

these coronation words. They come from the pen and the 
heart of one who for more than forty years has shared with 
me Hfe's toils, and trials, and triumphs, and who from the 
very first has cherished for my old Greek teacher a high and 
warm regard : 

King Edward — first and only ; on these heights 
To-day we name him thus, our well-loved Greek. 
In other empires, kings may come and go 
In transient splendor, crown succeeding crown. 
This king, serene, benign, and laurel-wreathed 
With any Grecian hero of them all, 
Upon abiding throne in loving hearts 
Shall sit unfollowed and forever crowned ! 
Edward, our King. 

But another day is coming — best day of all — God's great 
praising day. We shall all be there — the stelligerent host of 
the sons of Hamilton that have loved and served their Lord. 
And then, when the Lord shall bring to light " the hidden 
things" that have been done in His name, and the heart's 
counsels that were full of loving devices for Christ's sake, and 
yet that got no trumpeting here — then shall each man have 
his praise from God. What a great day that will be ! What 
blessed surprises God will have for us ! What deep abysmal 
joy we shall step into ! And who among us all can have a 
possible doubt that 

When the last great chapel rings, 
And all the College together brings, 
When the years and the centuries meet, 
Then shall we see in the very front seat, 
Old Greek ! 



INDEX 



INDEX 



^schylus, characterization of, 234 ; 

growth of tragedy under, 282. 
Albany Institute, 59. 
Albany Normal School, declines 

presidency of, 65. 
Alexander, Rev. Caleb, (note) 53. 
** Alliance of Liberty and Literature, 

The," oration, 22. 
Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, 149. 
Alumni, Christmas greetings from, 

140. See also Hamilton Alumni 

Association. 
** Alumniana," contributed to Ham- 
ilton Literary Magazine ^ 1 1 1, 121, 

122. 
American Philological Association, 

59, 318. 
" American Scholarship," lecture on, 

275- 

Amherst College, student life in early 
history of, 104, 105. 

Ancient Languages, history of chair 
of, in Hamilton College, 45, 
46. 

Anderson, Charles, 338. 

" Anderson Elm, The," poem, 345. 

Andrews, Dr. N. L., letter to, on 
the death of Rev. Dr. Ebenezer 
Dodge, 265. 

Annalists' letters of Hamilton Col- 
lege, 123. 

Anthon, Charles, of Columbia Col- 
lege, 72. 

** Apology, An," 267. 

Archeological Institute of America, 
59. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, of Rugby, edu- 
cational methods of, 168, 218 ; 
teacher's power illustrated by life 
of, 183. 

Athens, sojourn in, 80. 

Auburn Theological Seminary, 59. 

Avery, Charles, 61. 



"Bacchanal Ballad, A," 155. 

Backus, Azel, first president of Ham- 
ilton College, 32, 149 ; subject of 
poems, 155, 157; plea for a monu- 
ment to, 159 ; anecdote about, 
160. 

Bardeen, C, W., 265, 274, 328, 329. 

Barnes, Albert, 30. 

Barrows, Rev. Eleazer S., 46. 

Benedict, Henry Harper, 114. 

Bentham, Jeremy, his doctrine of 
enforcement of civil law, applied 
to schools, 182. 

Berlin, Conn., school in, 5, 6. 

" Birthday Rhymes," 54. 

Boise, James R., professor of Greek 
in Morgan Park Seminary, 70. 

Boyd, Prof. James R., of Hamilton 
College, 61, 162. 

Bradford, Rev. Dr. Amory H. , quoted, 
122. 

Bristol, George, half-century annal- 
ist's letter, 123. 

Brockway, Dr. A. Norton, 67, 133. 

Bronson, Huet H., 107. 

Brown, Dr. Samuel Gilman, presi- 
dent of Hamilton College, 61, no, 
133. 

"Building of a Tragedy, The," lec- 
ture on, 282. 

Buttrick, Horatio G., 21, 162. 

Caldwell, Benjamin H., 107. 

Carter, Franklin, reference to early 
history of Williams College by, 
102. 

Catlin, Marcus, professor of Mathe- 
matics, 21, 31, 61, 62. 

Chambers's Journal, argument for 
memorizing the classics quoted, 
209. 

Chittenden, Judge, anecdote about 
Dominie Kirkland by, 146, 147. 



411 



412 



INDEX 



" Christ and Prometheus, a Lay Ser- 
mon for Students," 237. 

Christmas sermon delivered in 
Athens, 82. 

Clark, Col. Emmons, 133. 

Clark, Henry F., editor of The 
College Book, 124. 

Clark, Noah B., principal of Worth- 
ington Academy, 6. 

Clinton, George, governor of New 
York, 145, 148. 

Clinton Grammar School, 20. 

Clinton Rural Art Society, papers 
read before, 143, 144, 364. 

Cochran, Dr. David H., principal of 
Albany Normal School, 65. 

Cochrane, John, 107. 

College Book, The, contributions to, 
45, 46, 124. 

College Hill, history of homes on, 
160. 

Colloquies, college, 22, 23. 

" Commencement Days," address, 
278. 

Comstock, David, 338. 

Conklin, Luther, 22. 

" Connecticut," ode, 18. 

Coxe's Patent, defined, 145. 

" Cramming," address on, 177. 

Curran and Hawley prize competi- 
tion, 209, 210. 

Dalzell, John A., 172. 

Darling, Dr. Henry, president of 
Hamilton College, 64. 

Davis, Dr. Henry, president of Ham- 
ilton College, tribute to, 30, 31 ; 
death, 48 ; personality, 49, 161 ; 
reasons for opposing Dr. North's 
election to chair of Ancient Lan- 
guages, 50, 51 ; controversy in 
college during presidency of, 107, 
108 ; monument to, 160. 

Davis, Hon. Thomas T., 107, 160. 

Davis's Narrative of the Embar- 
rassments and Decline of Ham- 
ilton College, 108. 

Day, Jeremiah, 148, 149. 

Dean, EUas Flandrau, 61. 

Dean, James, 148. 

Dean, John, 107. 

Dexter, Andrew, (note) 53. 

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch, 125. 

Dexter, Mary Frances. See North, 
Mrs. 



Dexter, Rev. Samuel, (note) 53. 
Dexter, Hon. S. Newton, (note) 

53. 
Dexter Professorship, The, 66. 
Diven, George M., member of Board 

of Trustees of Hamilton College, 

77- 
" Dix qusedivi," pseudonym, 268. 
Dodge, Rev. Dr. Ebenezer, tribute 

to, 265. 
"Dominie Kirkland's Poplars," poem, 

341- 
Dowd, Julius N., 6. 
Downing, Andrew J., tribute to, 

348. 

Drisler, Dr. Henry, professor of 
Greek in Columbia University, 70, 
72. 

Dwight, Benjamin Woolsey, 32, 44. 

Dwight, Dr. Sereno E., 162. 

Dwight, Theodore W., tutor in Ham- 
ilton College, 61, 133. 

Dwight, Timothy, president of Yale, 
148; tribute to Prof. Hadley 
quoted, 180, 181. 

"Eastward from the Litchfield Ob- 
servatory," poem, 340. 

Edward North Chair of Greek and 
of Greek Literature, 66. 

Edward Robinson Professorship, 
name changed, 66. 

Eells, Samuel, 107. 

" Elm that Weeps, The," poem, 346. 

Evans, Dr. Ellicott, 61. 

Farmington, Conn., settlement of 
John North in, i, 2. 

Felton, Prof. C. C, of Harvard Col- 
lege, 72. 

Finley, Prof. J. J., characterization 
of Dr. Arnold by, 168. 

Fisher, Dr. Samuel Ware, president 
of Hamilton College, no, 162. 

Fitch, Prof. Edward, successor to 
Dr. North in Hamilton College, 
189 ; chapter on Dr. North as a 
Greek scholar by, 209. 

" Flaccus," nom deplume, 43. 

Foote, Rev. Dr. Lewis Ray, 140. 

"Forty-One," poem, 26. 

Francis, Hon. John M., Minister to 
Greece, 80 ; letters to, 98, 99. 

Frost, Harriet, 337. 

" Furnace Light, The," poem, 341. 



INDEX 



413 



"Garden, The," paper for Clinton 

Rural Art Society, 375. 
Gardiner, Charles A., 172. 
Genealogy of North family, (note) 

Gifford, Peleg, 338. 

Goertner, Rev. Dr. Nicholas W., 
61. 

Gold, Mrs. Martha Raymond, 53. 

Gray, Prof. Asa, 338. 

Greece, sojourn in, 80. 

Greek, contemporaries in teaching, 
71 ; discussion of classic and 
modern, 88, 89, 96; mottoes by 
Dr. North, 210; adaptability to 
rhyming, 258 ; rhyming instinct 
of poets, 259. 

"Greek Gardening," lecture on, 

378. 
" Greek Idea of the Future State, 

The," lecture on, 277. 
" Greek Proverbs," lecture on, 241. 
" Greek Rhymes," lecture on, 256. 
** Greek We Leave Behind Us, The," 

poem, 174. 
Gridley, Dr. A. Delos, 121. 

Hadley, James, tribute to, 1 80, 

181. 
Haldeman, Prof. S. S., 319. 
"Halfwayup," 59, 80, 171, 331, 

335- 

Hall, Dr. Isaac H., 133, 209. 

Hamilton Alumni Association, poem 
delivered before, 26 ; organiza- 
tion of, 132. 

Hamilton College, members of 
North family graduated from, 4 ; 
Dr. North's student career in, 20; 
abolition of class honors in, 33; 
Dr. North's professorship in, 43; 
faculty in 1843, ^i; Dr. North 
declines presidency of, 64 ; 
struggles in early history, 102, 
103; founding of, 103; first six 
presidents Yale men, 103; de- 
nominational character of college, 
103; austerities of student life in 
early history of, 104; paternal re- 
lation of faculty to students, 104, 
105; catalogues prepared by Dr. 
North, 121; annalists' letters as 
historical records of, 123, 124; 
Dr. North's interest in traditions 
of, 143. 



Hamilton Literary Monthly^ con- 
tributions to, III. 

Hamilton Mail Book, The, 122. 

Hamilton Oneida Academy, 103; 
history of Lombardy poplars sur- 
rounding, 337; reference to lay- 
ing of cornerstone, 361. 

Harding, L. S., Kirkland mansion 
owned by, 145. 

Harris, Hon. W. T., Commissioner 
of Education, 319. 

Hawley, Gen. Joseph R., 67, 133. 

Holbrook, Rev. Dr. David A., 131. 

" Home," sonnet, 55. 

Homer, Dr. Schliemann's love for, 
90; quoted, 96, 258, 312, 313, 
384; Dr. North's appreciation of, 
216; proverbs from poems of, 
246; characteristics of his women, 
250, 255, 256; rhythmical expres- 
sion of, 258, 259; a model for 
Roman poets, 260. 

" Homer's Women," lecture on, 
248. 

Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 2. 

Hopkins, Prof. A. Grosvenor, eu- 
logy by, no. 

Hopkins, Dr. Mark, 69, 264; aca- 
demic career of, compared with 
Dr. North's, 109, 213. 

" How it Once Was," paper, 5. 

Hoyt, Charles S., letter and poem 
from, 136, 137. 

Huntington, Prof. Chester, 144. 

Huntington, Daniel, 133. 

" I Would be Buried," poem, 78. 
Index Rerum, list of lectures in, 
272. 

Johnson, Rev. Dr. Herrick, memo- 
rial address by, 389. 
" Josh Billings." See Shaw, Henry W. 

Kellogg prize competition, 209. 

Kendrick, Asahel C, professor of 
Greek in Rochester University, 
70. 

" King George and his New Year's 
Ball," lecture on, 92. 

Kirkland, Hon. Charles P., first 
president of Hamilton Alumni As- 
sociation, 132. 

Kirkland, Eliza, daughter of Dom- 
inie Kirkland, 337. 



414 



INDEX 



Kirkland, Rev. Samuel, (note) 53; 
founding of Hamilton College by, 
103; Dr. North's regard for, 130, 
143; home of, 144; grant of land 
to, 145; sketch of missionary work 
of, 145; power over Indians, 146; 
anecdote about, 146, 147; plant- 
ing of Lombardy poplars by, 338. 

Kirkland Cottage, historical sketch 
of, 143. 

Kirkland's Patent, boundaries of, 

145- 
Knickerbocker Magazine, 268. 
Kunkepot, Indian orator, 148. 

Lathrop, John H., 46. 
Latos, Rev. Dionysus, 88, 89. 
"Lawns," paper for Clinton Rural 

Art Society, 368. 
Lewis, Dr. Tayler, of Union College, 

72. 
" Line of Property," fixed by Treaty 

of Fort Stanwix, 145. 
Litchfield, Edwin C, 133. 
Lothrop, Samuel Kirkland, 148. 
Lowrey, C. J., 22. 
Lucas, E. B., 338. 
Lyttle, E. W., 172. 

McHarg, Prof. William H., 61. 

Madison University, degree con- 
ferred upon Dr. North by, 58. 

Mandeville, Henry, professor in 
Hamilton College, 61, 162. 

March, Prof, Francis A., 319. 

Marsh, George P., 258. 

Memorial Address, by Dr. Herrick 
Johnson, 389. 

Millard, Dr. Henry B., 133. 

Miller, Rev. Dr. L. M., (note) 134. 

Miller, W. P., letter from, 139, 140. 

" Ministry of Trees, The," poem, 339. 

Monteith, Rev. John, 46. 

Morey, James W., farewell address 
delivered by, 172. 

Miiller, Prof. Max, 319. 

Murray, Dr. James A. H., 305. 

Nelson, Dr. Henry A., 133, 

New York Historical Society, 59. 

New York State Teachers' Associa- 
tion, president of, 58; address 
before, 189. 

North, Alfred, (note) 4. 

North, Edward, genealogy of family. 



I; birthplace, i; emigration of 
family from Hull, and settlement 
in Connecticut, 2; religious in- 
heritance and training, 3; inci- 
dents of boyhood, 3; becomes a 
member of Congregational Church, 
4; early school, 4; reminiscences 
of boyhood, 18; student days at 
Hamilton, 20; standing in college, 
22; college orations, 22; valedic- 
tory, 23; describes college life, 
37; a tutor, 43; studies law, 43; 
principal of Clinton Grammar 
School, 45; professor of Ancient 
Languages in Hamilton College, 
45; tribute to Prof. Smith, 47; 
disciplinarian, 51; marriage, 52; 
death of wife, 53; lectures in 
lyceum course, 57; honorary de- 
grees conferred upon, 58; secre- 
tary to American Minister to 
Greece, 59, 80; failing health, 60; 
acting president of Hamilton Col- 
lege, 64; declines presidency of 
Albany Normal School, 65; fif- 
tieth anniversary at Hamilton, 66; 
length of professorship, 70; trib- 
ute to contemporary Greek pro- 
fessors, 71; text-books used, 71; 
letter of resignation, 72; Emeritus 
Professor, 73; letters of apprecia- 
tion, 73; last illness and. death, 
75; minute of faculty, 75; me- 
morial of Board of Trustees, 
76; burial, 78; epitaph, 79; so- 
journ in Greece, 80; impressions, 
81; acting consul at Piraeus, 
81 ; Christmas sermon in Athens, 
82; discussion of modern and 
classic Greek, 88; friendships in 
Athens, 89; correspondence with 
Minister Francis, 98; compared 
with Dr. Mark Hopkins, 109; 
eulogy by Prof. A. Grosvenor 
Hopkins, no; relation to stu- 
dents, 113, 114, 116, 170; secre- 
tary of Alumni Association, 113; 
work in placing teachers, 116; 
editorial work, 120; college cata- 
logues compiled by, 121 ; tributes 
to Alma Mater, 126, 165; ad- 
dresses made at alumni reunions, 
126; greeting to President Stryker, 
134; expressions of regard from 
students, 135; response to alumni's 



INDEX 



415 



Christmas greetings, 141 ; histori- 
cal sketch of Kirkland Cottage, 
143; effort to erect monument to 
Samson Occum, 155; plea for 
monument to Dr. Backus, 159; 
history of homes on College Hill, 
160; climate of Clinton, 163; love 
for college environment, 164; 
power as a teacher, 167; pre- 
sented with a cane by Greek 
class of '84, 173; farewell to 
class of '91, 174; classroom meth- 
ods, 175; class lectures, 180; 
compared with Prof. Hadley, 
180; acquaintance with Greek 
and Roman classics, 208; Greek 
mottoes, 210; devotion to Greek 
literature, 213; favorite classical 
authors, 215; Theocritus intro- 
duced into college curriculum, 216; 
educational methods compared 
with Dr. Arnold's, 218; literary 
style, 264; habit of rhyming, 266; 
contributions to current literature, 
268; a lecturer, 268; list of lec- 
tures, 272; models of platform 
literature, 274; philologist, 308; 
advocate of spelling reform, 318; 
English, the language of the future, 
321; description of " Halfwayup," 
331; gardening, 331; lover of 
trees, 336; relation to the rural 
community, 359. 

Writings : poems — at centennial 
celebration of Second Congrega- 
tional Church, 15; "On a 
Brother's Death," 16; "Forty- 
One," 26; "On the Death of a 
Classmate," 40; "On Leaving 
College," 41 ; " Birthday Rhymes," 
54; "Home," sonnet, 55; "One 
Year Ago," 55; " Twenty- Five 
Years," 56; "The Wingless 
Victory," 99 ; " Skenandoa," 
149; " A Bacchanal Ballad," 155; 
" President Backus's Spectacles," 
157; "A Tribute to Alma Mater," 
165; "The Ministry of Trees," 
339; "Eastward from the Litch- 
field Observatory," 340; "The 
Furnace Light," 341 ; " Dominie 
Kirkland's Poplars," 341 ; " The 
Anderson Elm," 345; "The Elm 
that Weeps," 346; " Philoden- 
dria," 349; lectures — "King 



George and his New Year's Ball," 
92; "Cramming," 177; "The 
Seven Lamps of the Teacher," 
181 ; " Why We Study the Clas- 
sics," 218; "Sophocles," 234; 
"Christ and Prometheus," 237; 
" Greek Proverbs," 241 ; " Homer's 
Women," 248; " Greek Rhymes," 
256; "American Scholarship," 
275; "The Greek Idea of the 
Future State," 277; " Commence- 
ment Days," 278; "The Orator 
and the Bookmaker," 279; "The 
Study of Greek by Women," 280; 
"The Building of a Tragedy," 
282; "The Old Greek Lexicon," 
298; "Worth of Words," 309; 
tribute to fellow tree-lovers, 347; 
addresses to farmers, 361 ; papers 
before Rural Art Society, 364; 
" Greek Gardening," 378. 

North, Mrs. Edward (Mary Frances 
Dexter), 52, 53; poems to, 54. 

North, Frederick, (note) 4. 

North, Hulda Wilcox, i. 

North, Isaac, (note) i. 

North, Jedediah, (note) I. 

North, John, (note) i, 2. 

North, Josiah Wilcox, (note) 4. 

North, Reuben, i, 3. 

North, Col. Simeon, (note) i, 3. 

North, Dr. Simeon, president of 
Hamilton College, 4, 46, 106, 108, 
109. 

North, Thomas, (note) i. 

North American Review, 210, 268. 

Northrup, Laura, (note) 53. 

Norton, Rev. Dr. Asahel S., 45, 149. 

Norton, Prof. Seth, 45, 46. 

Noyes, Dr. Josiah, 31. 

Occum, Samson, Indian orator, 148. 

" Old Greek," origin of sobriquet at 
Hamilton College, 69. 

"Old Greek Lexicon, The," junior 
ceremonies on the occasion of 
lecture on, 171; farewell to the 
junior Greekists, 275, 298. 

Old Stone Church, 59. 

"On a Brother's Death," poem, 16. 

"On the Death of a Classmate," 
poem, 40. 

" One Year Ago," poem, 55. 

Oneida Chief, 120, 121, 

Oneida Historical Society, 59. 



4i6 



INDEX 



Oneida Indians, 145, 148. 

Onondego, Indian orator, 148. 

" Orator and the Bookmaker, The," 

lecture on, 279. 
Owen, Prof. John J., of City College 

of New York, 72. 

Packard, Alpheus S., professor of 
Greek in Bovvdoin College, 71. 

Parish, Ariel, principal of Worthing- 
ton Academy, 4, 6. 

Parsons, William, 69. 

Penney, Joseph, president of Hamil- 
ton College, 109, 162. 

" Perversions of Educated Mind, 
The," valedictory, 22. 

Peters, Dr. Christian H. F., pro- 
fessor of Astronomy at Hamilton 
College, 61, 131, 133. 

" Philodendria," poem, 349. 

" Philosophy of Laughing, The," col- 
loquy, 22. 

Piraeus, appointment as acting consul 
at, 81. 

Pomeroy, Theodore M., 67, 73, 77. 

Pond, Mrs. Barnabas, anecdote about, 
146. 

Pratt, Dr. Daniel D., 107. 

Prentice, David, 183. 

" President Backus's Spectacles," 
poem, 157. 

Prometheus, 82, S^, 237, 295. 

Proverbs. See " Greek Proverbs." 

Puns and punsters, 315. 

Randolph, Margaret Landers, (note) 

337- 
Regents of the State of New York, 

degree conferred upon Dr. North 

by, 58. 
" Remembered Teachers," paper on, 

7- 

" Report on Planting Trees," paper 
for Clinton Rural Art Society, 364. 

Robbins, Prof. R. D. C, of Middle- 
bury College, 72. 

Robert, Christopher R., founder of 
Robert College, 117. 

Robert College, iii, 117. 

Robinson, Edward, 30, 46, 148. 

Root, Hon. Elihu, 133. 

Root, Prof. Oren, 20, 21, 61. 

Schliemann, Dr. Henry, 89, 224. 
Second Congregational Church in 



Berlin, 3, (note) 4; centennial 

celebration, 14; poem on, 15. 
" Seven Lamps of the Teacher, The," 

address, 181. 
Shaw, Henry W., proverbs of, quoted, 

244; tribute to, 327. 
Sherwood, Joseph S., 20. 
Sibley, John Langdon, 121, 125. 
Skenandoa, Indian chief, 148; asso- 
ciation of, with Dominie Kirkland, 

149; poem on, 149. 
Smith, Edward, 144. 
Smith, Hon. Gerrit, letter to, 159, 

160. 
Smith, Prof. John Finley, 32, 45, 46, 

162. 
" Sophocles," lecture on, 234. 
Spaulding, Judge Alexander, 133. 
Spencer, Franklin A., 140. 
Storrs, Dr. Richard S., quoted, 104. 
Strong, Prof. Theodore, of Hamilton 

College, 62. 
Stryker, President M. Woolsey, 134, 

140. 
" Study of Greek by Women, The," 

lecture on, 280. 
Susan and Elleriy The, I. 

Taylor, Benjamin F., 163. 
Taylor, Stephen W., 163. 
" Teacher's Sources of Power, The," 

address, 189. 
"Teaching," lecture on, 185. 
Teel, Rev. William H., "Halfway- 

up" described by, 331. 
Theocritus, study of, introduced into 

college curriculum, 216; Idyl of, 

quoted, 259. 
" Thornden," nom de plume, 43. 
Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 145. 
Truax, Judge Charles H., 265. 
Trumbull, Prof. J. Hammond, 319. 
Tuttle, Col. Timothy, 145. 
" Twenty-Five Years," poem, 56. 
Tyler, Dr. William S., of Amherst 

College, 70, 124, 209. 

Union Society, The, 21. 

University Convocation of the Re- 
gents of the State of New York, 58. 

Upson, Anson Judd, professor in 
Hamilton College, 61. 

Utica Morning Herald, contribur 
tions to, 123. 

Utica Musical Academy, 46. 



INDEX 



417 



Valedictory, oration, 23. 
Verplanck, Dr. Gulian C, 58. 

Washburn, Dr. George, president of 
Robert College, 118. 

Whitney, Prof. William D., 319. 

" Why We Study the Classics," lec- 
ture on, 218. 

Williams, Judge Othniel S., 43, 107. 

Williams College, 102, 109. 



" Wingless Victory, The," poem, 99, 
Winne, James, letter from, 138. 
Wisconsin Historical Society, 59. 
"Woman," colloquy, 22. 
Woolsey, Dr. Theodore D., of Yale, 

72. 
Woolworth, Samuel B,, 58, 65. 
" Worth of Words, The," lecture on, 

309- 
Worthington Academy, 4, 6. 



ne 



i\^^ 






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